Is it right to support freedom fighters when they kill innocent people? British theatre’s most provocative playwright, Richard Bean, teams up with veteran leftie director Max Stafford-Clark in this thought-provoking play about American supporters of the IRA. Set in New York, it starts in the aftermath of Bloody Sunday in 1972 and is a comic epic that spans three decades, showing how Costello, the Big Fellah of the title, protects Ruairi, a young IRA man on the run, and recruits Michael, a local man, to the cause.
Michael’s Bronx apartment (designed by Tim Shortall) is a safe house, where money raised for the IRA is counted and arms shipments organised. For Ruairi, it is a safe house, and several other guests stay there during the course of the 1970s and 1980s. Visitors include the hippy Karelma, the Irish activist Elizabeth, the psycho-killer Frank and local cop Tom Billy. As the years pass, it gradually becomes obvious that the FBI has a spy in the New York cell, but who is it?
Bean’s play is very funny, full of sharp contrasts between grim hilarity and gut-wrenching reversals of fortune. But the comparisons he makes between Irish terrorism and Muslim fanaticism are highly questionable, and his cell members retain their support of violent republicans despite the peace process. They switch from the IRA to supporting the dissident republicans without any discussion. It is implied that they support the horrific Omagh bombing of 1998, the worst atrocity of the Troubles.
Bean argues that supporting a distant struggle by providing money and arms is as ethically suspect as attacking civilians. He is particularly good at reminding his audience that however glamorous the IRA may appear, its members are as likely to execute one of their own as kill innocent bystanders. One character is introduced with immense sympathy and then horribly dispatched.
But Bean leaves the most provocative point until the end. During the play, he sets up a situation which stresses how Americans of Irish origin in New York work in the police and fire service. He next shows how they support the republican movement. Then, in the end, the final scene suggests that republican supporters among the New York police and fire service deserved to perish in the September 11 attack. Those who live by the sword die by the sword.
Out of Joint theatre company’s Max Stafford-Clark directs with clarity and truth, dwelling on Bean’s wonderfully eccentric characters, such as Fred Ridgeway’s Frank and Youssef Kerkour’s Tom Billy, but also allowing Finbar Lynch to squeeze the most sympathy out of the title role. His direct addresses to the audience do much to bring us on side. As Ruairi and Michael, Rory Keenan and David Ricardo-Pearce are always convincing, while Stephanie Street and Claire Rafferty make the female roles perfectly believable and sympathetic.
In this tale of commitment to the struggle and betrayal, not everything works equally well. The more you examine the plotting, the less likely it appears; the more you ask about the play’s contemporary relevance, the less that seems convincing. There is something troubling about the taste of the play and it feels as if Bean is determined to offend liberal sensibilities by equating Irish republicanism with al Qaida. On the other hand, with its mix of laugher and discomfort, this is a good evening in the theatre. Whatever your misgivings about the play’s taste, its bitter humour and tense ending more than justify the production.
