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Whistling Psyche Fred and Jane
OLD GOD'S TIME (MARCH 2023), SEBASTIAN BARRY'S STUNNING NEW NOVEL, AVAILABLE TO PRE-ORDER NOWWhistling PsycheA dark night, an old waiting room and two supposed strangers eager to reach their destinations. In the cold hours that rest between nightfall and daybreak, silent questions prompt unexpected revelations. Two souls share a passion for reform, but only one - Miss Nightingale - has been honoured. The other, Dr Barry, would never receive the same acclaim, but notoriety came after death and for a very different reason . . .Whistling Psyche premi�red at the Almeida Theatre, London in May 2004.Fred and Jane explores the deep and sustaining friendship between two nuns, Anna and Beatrice, as they recall the trials and joys of religious life.'This is Barry at his evocative, gentle, suffused with the beauty of the simple and the joy of turning the strange into the familiar.' Sunday Tribune'A rare delight. A clear-running joy.' Sunday Independent'A triumph in its own right.' RTEFred and Jane premi�red at Bewley's Cafe Theatre, Dublin in 2002.
- GenresPlays
Paperback
First published October 23, 2014
About the author
Sebastian Barry
56 books2,272 followersSebastian Barry is an Irish playwright, novelist and poet. He is noted for his dense literary writing style and is considered one of Ireland's finest writers
Barry's literary career began in poetry before he began writing plays and novels. In recent years his fiction writing has surpassed his work in the theatre in terms of success, having once been considered a playwright who wrote occasional novels.
He has twice been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for his novels A Long Long Way (2005) and The Secret Scripture (2008), the latter of which won the 2008 Costa Book of the Year and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. His 2011 novel On Canaan's Side was long-listed for the Booker. He won the Costa Book of the Year again - in 2017 for Days Without End.
Barry's literary career began in poetry before he began writing plays and novels. In recent years his fiction writing has surpassed his work in the theatre in terms of success, having once been considered a playwright who wrote occasional novels.
He has twice been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for his novels A Long Long Way (2005) and The Secret Scripture (2008), the latter of which won the 2008 Costa Book of the Year and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. His 2011 novel On Canaan's Side was long-listed for the Booker. He won the Costa Book of the Year again - in 2017 for Days Without End.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 25, 2023
The two plays collected here are very different but they also have similarities - both deal with pairs of women, both have only 2 characters and both explore what it means to be a woman (albeit at different times and ways).
Whistling Psyche (first produced at the Almeida Theatre, London on 12 May 2004, directed by Robert Delamere) reintroduces us to two characters which most people may have heard of: Dr. James Barry (a Victorian military surgeon) and Florence Nightingale. The two of them met in real life during the Crimean War - one of them towards the end of a career, the other one just starting one (and they disliked each other). And here they are now, in some type of a waiting room, some time after they had died. One of them can see and hear the other, the other cannot. What follows are essentially two monologues (one of them with reactions to things being said) in which both women tell their stories.
If you do not know the story of Dr. James Barry, the play may be a bit confusing until things click. She was born a woman after all and despite living all her life after teenage-hood as a man, she was still a woman (in Barry's imagination, she even gave birth to a child; in real life that event is unconfirmed but hinted at).
Women in medicine in this era are rare - both women changed what women can do in the venue. Some of the story of Dr. Barry is her regret at never getting the same reputation as Miss Nightingale did - after all, she was first and she was a doctor.
It is a nice play although I wish that Barry had gone for a direct dialog - but then it would have been hard for both of them to tell their stories for us. As for the title - it is the name of a pet (or a series of them) but it also fits the play.
According to the notes by Barry, James Barry is not a relative but he was given the surgeon's biography The Perfect Gentleman by June Rose (1977) (the subtitle being "The remarkable life of Dr James Miranda Barry, the woman who served as an officer in the British Army from 1813 to 1859") which served a source for that part of the story. The other half of the pair is a lot better known and the titles he mentions are Florence Nightingale by Cecil Woodham-Smith (1950), the chapter on her in Eminent Victorians by Lytton Strachey (1918) and the much more recent Ireland and the Crimean War by David Murphy. I had not read either.
This is the second play by Barry that deals with real historical figures (and not the normal people of Ireland as most of his work does) - and unlike Hinterland, everyone in this story is dead (in real life and incidentally also in the play) so it is the first play that uses real people with their own names as characters.
Fred and Jane (first produced at the Bewley's Café Theatre, Dublin in August 2004, directed by Caroline FitzGerald) is much shorter than the previous play - about 1/3rd in length.
Two nuns sit in the ante-room of a convent and talk: Beatrice Dunne, in her sixties, speaking with Midlands accent and Anna Nagle, in her thirties, speaking with middle-class Dublin accent. They don't talk to each other but talk together to a third person - who is not there - the audience, the mirror, take your pick - an interview without an interviewer.
Once upon a time, when Anna was a novice, she met Beatrice for the first time. At a later stage, they got separated, each sent to different places where they excelled at what they are doing - but something was always off. And now they are reunited.
None of them comes out and say what is obvious clearly - because the play is a love story of course. It is never clear if any of the decisions made for them was because of that or if anyone was aware; it is not even clear if there was a love story indeed. But the play tells both their joined story but also the story of a nun during these years (the setting is contemporary or close enough to it) and shows them as women - liking things that you would not expect nuns to. And somehow in such a short play, Barry also manages to show the Dublin/province split which had always been part of the national story.
As for the title? It is Fred Astaire and Jane Fonda of course. :)
The story does not tie directly with the rest of Barry's work but these family names will be familiar if you had some of his novels and plays. They are not on the list of characters (only first names are added there), they are revealed as the play progresses and when they showed up, I was smiling - we may had actually heard/seen something about both of them somewhere before. Or not - but using the same family names makes them feel a lot closer to us.
I enjoyed the play - there isn't as much depth as in his other work but the play is very short. And it still manages to surprise.
Whistling Psyche (first produced at the Almeida Theatre, London on 12 May 2004, directed by Robert Delamere) reintroduces us to two characters which most people may have heard of: Dr. James Barry (a Victorian military surgeon) and Florence Nightingale. The two of them met in real life during the Crimean War - one of them towards the end of a career, the other one just starting one (and they disliked each other). And here they are now, in some type of a waiting room, some time after they had died. One of them can see and hear the other, the other cannot. What follows are essentially two monologues (one of them with reactions to things being said) in which both women tell their stories.
If you do not know the story of Dr. James Barry, the play may be a bit confusing until things click. She was born a woman after all and despite living all her life after teenage-hood as a man, she was still a woman (in Barry's imagination, she even gave birth to a child; in real life that event is unconfirmed but hinted at).
Women in medicine in this era are rare - both women changed what women can do in the venue. Some of the story of Dr. Barry is her regret at never getting the same reputation as Miss Nightingale did - after all, she was first and she was a doctor.
It is a nice play although I wish that Barry had gone for a direct dialog - but then it would have been hard for both of them to tell their stories for us. As for the title - it is the name of a pet (or a series of them) but it also fits the play.
According to the notes by Barry, James Barry is not a relative but he was given the surgeon's biography The Perfect Gentleman by June Rose (1977) (the subtitle being "The remarkable life of Dr James Miranda Barry, the woman who served as an officer in the British Army from 1813 to 1859") which served a source for that part of the story. The other half of the pair is a lot better known and the titles he mentions are Florence Nightingale by Cecil Woodham-Smith (1950), the chapter on her in Eminent Victorians by Lytton Strachey (1918) and the much more recent Ireland and the Crimean War by David Murphy. I had not read either.
This is the second play by Barry that deals with real historical figures (and not the normal people of Ireland as most of his work does) - and unlike Hinterland, everyone in this story is dead (in real life and incidentally also in the play) so it is the first play that uses real people with their own names as characters.
Fred and Jane (first produced at the Bewley's Café Theatre, Dublin in August 2004, directed by Caroline FitzGerald) is much shorter than the previous play - about 1/3rd in length.
Two nuns sit in the ante-room of a convent and talk: Beatrice Dunne, in her sixties, speaking with Midlands accent and Anna Nagle, in her thirties, speaking with middle-class Dublin accent. They don't talk to each other but talk together to a third person - who is not there - the audience, the mirror, take your pick - an interview without an interviewer.
Once upon a time, when Anna was a novice, she met Beatrice for the first time. At a later stage, they got separated, each sent to different places where they excelled at what they are doing - but something was always off. And now they are reunited.
None of them comes out and say what is obvious clearly - because the play is a love story of course. It is never clear if any of the decisions made for them was because of that or if anyone was aware; it is not even clear if there was a love story indeed. But the play tells both their joined story but also the story of a nun during these years (the setting is contemporary or close enough to it) and shows them as women - liking things that you would not expect nuns to. And somehow in such a short play, Barry also manages to show the Dublin/province split which had always been part of the national story.
As for the title? It is Fred Astaire and Jane Fonda of course. :)
The story does not tie directly with the rest of Barry's work but these family names will be familiar if you had some of his novels and plays. They are not on the list of characters (only first names are added there), they are revealed as the play progresses and when they showed up, I was smiling - we may had actually heard/seen something about both of them somewhere before. Or not - but using the same family names makes them feel a lot closer to us.
I enjoyed the play - there isn't as much depth as in his other work but the play is very short. And it still manages to surprise.
July 21, 2024
Whistling Psyche was an interesting concept where an aged Dr James Barry meets an aged Florence Nightingale in a train station waiting area. They both appear to be unaware of the other’s presence for some time and take turns to monologue about their lives, badmouthing each other as they do so. Once they realise who the other is the dialogue evolves into an exploration of the world’s they belonged to. Both Barry and Nightingale had begun life with the disadvantage of girlhood though Barry was raised a Catholic in Cork City and Nightingale was from a wealthy English family. Barry turned to medicine as a way out of the poverty he found himself in and Nightingale simply wanted a chance to use her brain.
The ‘twist’ at the end was easily guessed though I enjoyed the way Barry was looking for his poodle, Psyche, and Nightingale for her owl, Athena. Had they experienced life on more even ground they may have liked each other as they had reasonably similar opinions in regard to patient welfare and an overhaul of the medical system. Alas, they did not and the only known thought they had of each other was something Florence Nightingale said after Barry’s death which was - “After he was dead, I was told he was a woman. ... I should say she was the most hardened creature I ever met.”
Interestingly the actor who originally played Barry, Kathryn Hunter, was known to frequently play men.
Fred & Jane, I felt was one of those pieces that can never be fully enjoyed on the page. I found it rambly and hard to follow. Part of it is that the pop culture references Anna and Beatrice discuss mostly went over my head but, like many Irish writings, a lot more of this play was subtext than actual text. If I had seen this performed I dare say I would have had an entirely different experience of it.
The ‘twist’ at the end was easily guessed though I enjoyed the way Barry was looking for his poodle, Psyche, and Nightingale for her owl, Athena. Had they experienced life on more even ground they may have liked each other as they had reasonably similar opinions in regard to patient welfare and an overhaul of the medical system. Alas, they did not and the only known thought they had of each other was something Florence Nightingale said after Barry’s death which was - “After he was dead, I was told he was a woman. ... I should say she was the most hardened creature I ever met.”
Interestingly the actor who originally played Barry, Kathryn Hunter, was known to frequently play men.
Fred & Jane, I felt was one of those pieces that can never be fully enjoyed on the page. I found it rambly and hard to follow. Part of it is that the pop culture references Anna and Beatrice discuss mostly went over my head but, like many Irish writings, a lot more of this play was subtext than actual text. If I had seen this performed I dare say I would have had an entirely different experience of it.
March 11, 2025
by
Sebastian BarryFinish date:
Genre: play "Fred and Jane"
Rating: C+
#ReadingIrelandMonth25
Good News: Very quick read...1 act 2 characters...nuns (Anna, 30 yr and Beatrice, 60 yr) about to be interviewed in the convent. What directly springs to mind is ...interviewed about what and by whom?
Personal: The play is shorter than most 'short stories'. It was a lovely conversation between two nuns how love Hollywood gossip (Fred and Ginger) (Jane and Henry Fonda) and describe their friendship...even when one was sent as a missionary to, Manchester England! "England. You'd think it was a land of savages."
Great image: Beatrice started to come apart like an over-boiled onion.
Learned the meaning of "Mullingar heifers" - expression used in rural Ireland for well feed livestock AND for well-off ladies who look like they haven't missed many meals.
#QuickandFun read.
July 27, 2026
Good News: Very quick read...1 act 2 characters...nuns (Anna, 30 yr and Beatrice, 60 yr) about to be interviewed in the convent. What directly springs to mind is ...interviewed about what and by whom?
Personal: The play is shorter than most 'short stories'. It was a lovely conversation between two nuns how love Hollywood gossip (Fred and Ginger) (Jane and Henry Fonda) and describe their friendship...even when one was sent as a missionary to, Manchester England! "England. You'd think it was a land of savages."
Great image: Beatrice started to come apart like an over-boiled onion. Learned the meaning of "Mullingar heifers" - expression used in rural Ireland for well feed livestock AND for well-off ladies who look like they haven't missed many meals.
#QuickandFun read.
October 29, 2026
Not gonna lie, the first fifty pages of Whistling Psyche Fred and Jane felt like wading through wet cement, and I almost bailed. Then Barry, Sebastian lands one quiet, brutal scene at a kitchen table, a mother reading a letter she wasn't supposed to find, and I couldn't stop. The prose is a little overwritten in the early chapters. For patient readers who trust a book to earn it. Skip it if you need a fast start.
September 18, 2024
Read for MA defence
November 2, 2026
Sebastian Barry turns Whistling Psyche Fred and Jane into a sharp critique of how modern culture encourages us to critique trivialities while leaving real authority untouched.
Read
June 19, 2015I bought this because I've read everything else by Sebastian Barry; didn't know it was two plays. I love his language but the Whistling Psyche play was disappointing.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews