Someone Who'll Watch Over Me

In the late 1980’s Brian Keenan, John McCarthy and Terry Waite were taken hostage in Beirut. They were all held, together or separately, for over four years. All have written of their experience, most successfully Keenan in an Evil Cradling. This is Frank McGuiness’s fictionalised version of similar events and what a remarkable script it is.

As the audience enter Adam (Rob Amboule) is already incarcerated in the simple white square, which represents the cell. He is chained by the ankle. The lights go down and come up again and he has been joined by Edward (Tom Van Der Klugt), who we learn is an Irish journalist. As these two begin to bicker and snipe we realise they have already been together for sometime and we discover that Adam is an American doctor, with most to fear from their captors. The trinity is completed when English schoolteacher Michael (Alastair Mavor) is brought in, unconscious or asleep. The other two wait for him to wake and speculate almost nonchalantly what his reaction will be. Mavor’s portrayal of that awakening is truly terrifying, and McGuiness’s script captures the fatality and banality of the situation – Michael only popped out to buy some pears he forgot to get earlier for a flan he was making when he was abducted.

Watching three men chained by the ankle in a small space could make for a disastrous afternoon’s theatre, so it’s a tribute to these young actors that this is such a compelling story. Much as in Becket’s Waiting for Godot they confound the boredom by game playing and role playing, most memorably and hilariously Edward and Michael taking on the roles of the Queen and Virginia Wade! Those two characters also go on a magical car journey in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Unlike the tramps in Godot, however, these characters are real people with real histories and real families. McGuiness is therefore able to let them write fantasy letters home to their loved one’s and create a world outside the cell which fans the flames of our prisoners' longing and desperation. Michael, in particular, is still mourning the loss of his wife in a car crash and longs for news of his mother who is very ill. These touches raise this piece to a level beyond the “what’s it all about” existentialism of Godot and other “characters trapped on a stage” dramas.

My only slight reservation about this production is that the three actors are too young for the parts. That they spend the whole play in identical vests and shorts merely emphasises the fact that we are watching three fit young men here, not the somewhat more raddled and cynical older men the script suggests. But this is a minor point, and I was astonished to find out that these guys aren’t professionals but, in fact, have just finished school. All three are superb.

McGuiness’s choice of an American, an Englishman and an Irishman allows him to deal directly and indirectly with years of political oppression (there’s a fantastic spat between Edward and Michael about the potato Famine), but at it’s most simple level this is a love story, or rather a story about how men might love each other. After all, it is irrational hate between men that has landed our three heroes in the cell in the first place. Terrorism is about hate. Subjugation is about hate. War is about hate, and all wars are started by men. There are hints in this play that Edward is in love with Adam, and Michael asks him right out if he would have slept with Adam if they hadn’t been chained apart. But this isn’t about sex; it’s about the potential for men to be kinder to each other, gentler and more tender. “You mustn’t let them hear you cry” is the prisoners’ mantra throughout. In the final seconds of this play, when Edward graces Michael with a gesture so tender and yet so breathtakingly simple, I defy you not to.