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With it’s polemic political message, The Plough and the Stars has pulled back the myopic lense through which we usually watch theatre by giving us more to examine than other Boston premiers this year. This must have been what epic theatre felt like during Bertolt Brecht’s time. 

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.