This fine production, featuring many passionate performances, is a great piece of theatre. Examining the history of Long Kesh prison - better known as the Maze - we follow the story of Republican and Loyalist prisoners, a prison guard and their respective wives on the outside. The play looks at the context of violence, rather than the violence itself. It makes the Northern Irish conflict personal, establishing the motivating factors for the various people and making them more than terrorists. Ultimately, in Martin Lynch's play, they are all victims, caught in the same bloody cycle without end. That is not to say that Lynch removes all blame from those men and their actions, but he seeks to understand it and dialogue with it in a useful way.
The cast - Billy Clarke, Jo Donnelly, Chris Corrigan, Marty Maguire, Marc O'Shea and Andy Moore - are clearly passionate about their work and what they are attempting. They give the performances great energy and soul. Béal Feirsteans themselves, they resonate with the characters. I do not know, and it is not important, what any of their political or religious backgrounds are - they empathise with everyone featured in that situation and realise that the most important thing is often not the wider political implications but rather the personal priorities that each individual has.
Replacing rebel songs and Loyalist marching songs with Smokey Robinson hits, Bob Dylan poetry and Beatles melodies, the music of the play is paramount. The songs, not always sung with virtuoso skill but always with gusto and drive, punctuate the action and give motifs to be returned to time and again. Each character's theme song has a special resonance for them and evokes within them the struggle, tragedy or joy they are experiencing.
The play, especially under the direction of Lynch and Lisa May, elaborates on the Northern Irish sense of humour - bitingly harsh one-liners are exchanged back and forth and there is a constant sense of keneticism. The confident and clear movement is only betrayed when they return to their marching movements that begin and end the play. There is a certain tentativeness about it that doesn't really work, and that is a great pity.
There are also moments in the script when you feel Lynch is too carefully making a political point and not dealing with the personal stories. While it is useful for one character to indirectly link the Republican movement to socialism and for the narrator - Freddy, the prison guard - to punctuate the narrative with contextualising comments, it did, at times, feel unnecessary - an attempt at edification, even.
While the play has no evident political bias and the stories of the Loyalist and Republican prisoners are afforded equal or very similar time, the story of the IRA prisoners is much more compelling. One suspects that this is due to the events of those days and the extraordinary situation the Republican prisoners were placed in (during the days of internment) and placed themselves in (or were forced to place themselves in) later during the Blanket, Dirty and Hunger protests. Either way it did give the play a sense of being imbalanced and it might have been more effective to focus it down more particularly or raise the stakes on the Loyalist side.
Anyway, this is a fine play by an exciting and passionate company. In the end the crowd raised to their feet to give thanks to the wonderful performers, and well deserved it was too.
9 out of 10.
At Assembly (Rainy Hall) at 12noon.
- James Grogan.
The cast - Billy Clarke, Jo Donnelly, Chris Corrigan, Marty Maguire, Marc O'Shea and Andy Moore - are clearly passionate about their work and what they are attempting. They give the performances great energy and soul. Béal Feirsteans themselves, they resonate with the characters. I do not know, and it is not important, what any of their political or religious backgrounds are - they empathise with everyone featured in that situation and realise that the most important thing is often not the wider political implications but rather the personal priorities that each individual has.
Replacing rebel songs and Loyalist marching songs with Smokey Robinson hits, Bob Dylan poetry and Beatles melodies, the music of the play is paramount. The songs, not always sung with virtuoso skill but always with gusto and drive, punctuate the action and give motifs to be returned to time and again. Each character's theme song has a special resonance for them and evokes within them the struggle, tragedy or joy they are experiencing.
The play, especially under the direction of Lynch and Lisa May, elaborates on the Northern Irish sense of humour - bitingly harsh one-liners are exchanged back and forth and there is a constant sense of keneticism. The confident and clear movement is only betrayed when they return to their marching movements that begin and end the play. There is a certain tentativeness about it that doesn't really work, and that is a great pity.
There are also moments in the script when you feel Lynch is too carefully making a political point and not dealing with the personal stories. While it is useful for one character to indirectly link the Republican movement to socialism and for the narrator - Freddy, the prison guard - to punctuate the narrative with contextualising comments, it did, at times, feel unnecessary - an attempt at edification, even.
While the play has no evident political bias and the stories of the Loyalist and Republican prisoners are afforded equal or very similar time, the story of the IRA prisoners is much more compelling. One suspects that this is due to the events of those days and the extraordinary situation the Republican prisoners were placed in (during the days of internment) and placed themselves in (or were forced to place themselves in) later during the Blanket, Dirty and Hunger protests. Either way it did give the play a sense of being imbalanced and it might have been more effective to focus it down more particularly or raise the stakes on the Loyalist side.
Anyway, this is a fine play by an exciting and passionate company. In the end the crowd raised to their feet to give thanks to the wonderful performers, and well deserved it was too.
9 out of 10.
At Assembly (Rainy Hall) at 12noon.
- James Grogan.
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