Two test questions on the plays of Sean O’Casey: which was his fourth drama after the three consecutive hits of The Shadow of a Gunman, Juno and the Paycock and The Plough and the Stars, and why wasn’t it a hit?

Answers: The Silver Tassie and because it was turned down by W. B. Yeats at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 1928. But it’s this play that the Galway-based Druid Theatre Company brings to the Playhouse next week for a rare production.

In words and music — and more than a touch of comedy — O’Casey tells the tale of two young footballing heroes from Dublin’s back streets during the First War (the “tassie” of the title is a presentation sports cup). Of course, the play attacked imperialist wars and those who suffered from them.

And that, Druid’s artistic director Garry Hynes told me, was the problem.

“This marked a departure for O’Casey: rather than the first three plays which were sort of recognisable, suddenly you have this second act in Tassie that jumps from the tenements in Dublin to the front line in France.

“It was very daring, but Yeats simply couldn’t buy into it. And it says a lot about Yeats’ shortcomings and blindness, which he was known to have: he thought, for instance, that the World War was no subject for poetry.”

The rejection letter that O’Casey received from Yeats was bizarrely forceful: “You are not interested in the Great War; you never stood on its battlefields, never walked in its hospitals, and so write out of your opinions…Among the things that dramatic action must burn up are the author’s opinions.”

The effect on the playwright was damaging: it contributed to his decision to leave Dublin for London and he never again had the safe base for his works that the Abbey had provided.

Hynes told me why the play is so rarely performed.

“Because it’s so big, with a cast of 19. In these days of one-man shows and two-handed chamber pieces, the majority of theatres can’t afford to do it. And its controversial reputation doesn’t help: if anyone is worrying about the box office, they’re not gong to be thinking about The Silver Tassie!”

Interestingly, the Druid company is bulking out the cast with pupils from Magdalen College School and Cherwell, which won’t hurt the Playhouse box office if friends and family turn up.

Garry Hynes has always taken risks. She was one of the co-founders of Druid in 1975, making it the first professional theatre company in Ireland to be based outside Dublin, and has been its artistic director, with one three-year break in the early 1990s, ever since.

Before 1991, she’d been approached several times by the Abbey to be its artistic director and finally accepted the offer that year.

But she was only in position at the pinnacle of Irish drama for three years. Why?

“I did not renew my contract because I found an organisation that was wholly resistant to the kind of change and fresh thinking that I believed it needed. For me there was no point in my continuing to work there.

“The problems at the Abbey got worse in the ensuing decade and was in danger of going bankrupt in 2005 until it was rescued by the government and entirely restructured.”

The Abbey’s loss was Druid’s gain and she returned.

Hynes had been the first woman to receive a Tony Award for direction, in 1988, and is firmly ensconced among the great and good of the Irish artistic community — she was a member of the country’s delegation that attended a St Patrick’s Day reception at the White House earlier this year.

This tour of The Silver Tassie is straying out of Ireland only twice, to Salford and Oxford, and continues a relationship with the Playhouse which means that this will be the fourth Druid production to be seen here in the space of two years.

The Silver Tassie is on at the oxford Playhouse from September 21 to 25. For details, see oxfordplayhouse.com