And there is a deeper scepticism about the new methods of the Irish Republicans: stealth, subterfuge and untraceable campaigns of violence, in place of the glorious public battles of old.īut these ideas come in flashes, rather than being effectively threaded through. The house's various inhabitants, not least Pat (Gary Lilburn), the landlord and a veteran of the Easter 1916 uprising, are vocally sceptical about the tactic, which realistically creates no alternative for the hostage but death. If the Irish boy dies, the English soldier's life will be taken in return. The murky reality of the situation is that the boy is to be held to ransom in exchange for the life of an 18-year-old lad due to hang in the morning for IRA terrorist activities. He is brought in and, far from being a quivering wreck, proves to be a likeable and cheerfully inexperienced young lad from down the Old Kent Road. We're in a tired Dublin brothel and lodging-house in 1960, whose owners, a pair of disillusioned old Irish patriots, agree to donate their cellar for the imprisonment of a young British soldier captured by the IRA. It helps to know this history when getting to grips with the play's roughness and uneven structure but it also explains its madcap ensemble energy. Behan's play, originally written in Gaelic in 1958 and then adapted into English and expanded upon the encouragement of Joan Littlewood, was only finished when Littlewood's company gave up on waiting for the author to provide an ending and improvised one themselves.
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