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It’s the tale of ordinary people being impacted by those extraordinary events, which is the genius of the playwright. His focus was not on the epic but on the everyday lives of those simple people.

What makes this production compelling (I urge you to see it before these performers head off to complete the final stretches of their worldwide tour) is how O’Casey yanks us into his pitiless vision — at times subtly, sometimes grabbing our lapels – by exposing his characters’ aches, dreams, and, yes, their blood. 

This immersive physical and aural experience leads audience via headset, on solo journeys that intersect.

Perhaps there’s something fitting about an irreverent take on Sean O’Casey’s classic of the Irish theater, “The Plough and the Stars.”

O’Casey’s play focuses not so much of the patriotic, nationalistic spirit of the revolt against British Imperial rule as it does on the citizenry doing their best to survive in a bleak situation.

A long view of history informs the Abbey’s latest production of The Plough and the Stars, dutifully staged during the centenary of the Rising, which tries to fathom the place of 1916 in today’s nation by bringing Sean O’Casey’s characters blinking into the light of the present.

You wouldn’t want to pass up a chance to watch the Abbey Theatre perform “The Plough and the Stars,” the Sean O’Casey play that provoked riots when the Dublin troupe debuted it in 1926.

Directly addressing the audience and breaking into cabaret-style song, the high-energy ensemble cast deliver O’Casey’s dialogue with conversational ease, rather than the traditional embellishment.

“Notes from the Field” homes in on what some call the school-to-prison pipeline: the syndrome in which poor, usually minority youths are disproportionately punished, even in pre-school, then shunted into the juvenile justice system and often into a lifetime of ins and outs at the Big House.

A superbly conceived and delivered, and very moving, inquiry into racism, schools and incarceration.

That said, Smith’s performance is majestic. As in her other solo shows, she uses her body and voice as instruments of transformation, segueing from a preacher to a school official with the ease of a chameleon.