Volume 50, Issue 13 - January 21, 2000

By HANS ROLLMANN

What do you get when you chain an Englishman, an Irishman, and an American to a wall?

A serious and existential piece of theatre, produced by Beothuck Street Players.

Those of us who were around in the early eighties can probably remember the hostage crises in Lebanon, where terrorist forces kidnapped an assortment of western foreigners - the most famous of whom was probably the American Terry Waite. Daily news coverage throughout North America covered the ordeal of these hostages - which sometimes lasted for several months.

Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me, although itself fictional, tells the story of these hostages, examining the situation of innocent people held hostage for others’ wars, and probing the deep and complex human spirit which both helps and hinders our survival in the most desperate of circumstances.

Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me was written by award-winning Irish playwright Frank McGuinness, whose laurels include the London Evening Standard’s Most Promising Playwright Award in 1985 (for Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme), Harvey’s Award, the Ewart-Bigg’s Peace Prize, the Irish-American Literary Prize in 1992, and a Fringe First Award. Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me itself received an Antoinette Perry Award nomination for Best Play for 1993. More recently, McGuinness served as scriptwriter for the critically praised film Dancing at Lughnasa (which he adapted from the play by Brian Friel).

Like much of his other work, Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me touches on some very serious and very political topics.

"What this play does . . . is tell the story of three particular individuals, who spend the whole play - in real time it’s covering about six to eight months - chained to a wall, and how they lived, how they survived, how they cared for each other," explained director Clar Doyle. "How they feed off each other, how they fight each other . . . there are three very real, very distinct characters in there, and I’m very fortunate in having strong people . . . who can get inside the heads of these men."

Those "strong people" are well-experienced local actors Michael Coady, Fred Hawksley, and Kevin Lewis, who together with Doyle and producer Ted Quinlan have been in full-scale rehearsals for the past five to six weeks.

Doyle first came across the play several years ago, but was at first hesitant about the idea of producing it.

"I read the play five or six years ago or more, and liked it, but really didn’t have the people to do this with," he explained. "And the other part of it - and I’m still not totally comfortable with this, as a sort of an open-drama amateur group - it’s all males. The director’s a male, the three actors are male, you know what I mean? So we in a sense avoided it for that . . . "

He changed his mind last spring, when he saw a drama troupe from Gander put off the play at the Newfoundland and Labrador Drama Festival.

"There were a number of us said ‘Yeah, we could do something like that,’ he recalled. "So that was the trigger . . . to be honest with you, I believe it’s one of the most underrated scripts I have ever read . . . I think it was on Broadway, I think it was in the West End of London, but it probably never got the prominence that the script is due."

Doyle himself, outside of his daytime job as MUN’s Dean of Education, is a founding member of Beothuck Street Players, a group for which he has high aspirations. "It’s a relatively new group, but it’s made up in large part of people who have worked together; a number of us worked together with other amateur and professional groups. So we’ve been doing this for a long time. It keeps us off the streets."

In addition to keeping them off the streets, it also provides the city with some entertaining as well as challenging drama. Doyle is impressed with the talents of his three actors, and he’s hoping the audience finds the experience as fulfilling. Even though the play is set in the Middle East, he emphasizes that the story is in many ways a universal one. "But the human story itself, less the Lebanon story, less the "Terry Waite" story, the human story - of how people depend on each other, how people love each other, hate each other, and as I said, live off each other, feed off each other, crucify each other - all that is mixed in here, in a wonderfully constructed play," he explained.

"It’s a fairly serious story," he added. "It’s peppered with harshness, but humour. And really good dialogue. But I don’t think people will come out of this play un-moved. And right now I’m very happy with the way the production is going. I don’t always feel free to say that, but right now I would be very comfortable in saying to you, come and see this play. Now if you’re looking for Alice in Wonderland, this is not it. But if you want to look at a slice of the human condition, and three bad cats chained to a wall, this is the place to go."

Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me will be performed at the LSPU Hall from Jan. 26th - 29th.