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The
Quare Fellow
A prison makes for realistic theatre. There is nothing forced about all the action taking place in one location. Brendan Behan's play is set in Mountjoy Prison, Dublin, in 1949, and focuses on the reactions of both inmates and warders to the execution of "The Quare Fellow", a man who used his training in butchery on his own brother, and whose chances of a last-minute reprieve are consequently slim. The dialogue is faultless: warm and funny and bitter and pointless, and sounding as realistic as one could expect from a writer who did his research within the same prison walls. All convict life is here, from lively young remand prisoners scampering about to catch glimpses of girls, to cynical old lags more concerned with the value of a dog-end. The claustrophobia mounts as the execution gets nearer and the audience is gradually shown that everyone, the wardens, principal, governor, and even the visiting hangman, are as much stuck in the process as are the prisoners. Prison is simply the place where the truth of how we live becomes unavoidable, where the emptiness of men's lives, and religion's failure to console, become all too clear as time stretches and hovers. Death, here execution, is the key, but nobody wants to look it in the face. The inmates get rowdier, the wardens get tetchy and lose discipline, the hangman goes drinking. One warder, Regan, shows compassion, generosity, and a willingness to talk or joke about the bleakness of it all, and is regarded as a freak by friend and foe alike. And yet it's not bleak at all. The Irish charm and humour are continuous and infectious, and the production is thoroughly enjoyable. And there you have it: people manage to make life bearably entertaining, even in the worst circumstances, but never quite live, because they never quite accept that they're going to die. Until and unless the final reprieve is denied and they're being measured for the rope. Or maybe I was just in a good mood. As the North Oxford Theatre People strode out into the clear air of Beaumont Street, quibbling about the accents, none of them seemed to be facing their mortality with renewed gusto. But everybody seemed to have had fun. Recommended. Ian Threadgill |