‘Timeless’ McGuinness play speaks to our times

Arts Week with Judy Murphy

“Welcome to Beirut,” is the greeting from theatre director Andrew Flynn, welcoming the Tribune to Nuns Island theatre on a dreary winter’s day.  Clearly, we’re not in Lebanon’s capital city, physically at least. But inside the small, dark city theatre, it’s another world as Decadent Theatre rehearse Frank McGuinness’s acclaimed play Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me.

“It’s a play that brings us on a journey. It’s a comedy but there’s lots of meat and lots of emotion,” says actor Diarmuid de Faoite, who’s very familiar with the drama inspired by the abduction of Belfast man, Brian Keenan in Lebanon in the 1980s.

Edward, an Irish journalist, is being held hostage in a cell in Lebanon with English academic Michael and an American doctor Adam in Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me. The men have little in common but as they attempt to stay sane and hopeful, a bond is forged.

Decadent previously staged Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me more than a decade ago, when Diarmuid played Edward, a role he’s reprising this time.

Last year, when the company’s artistic director Andrew Flynn, was seeking a 2018 Arts Council touring grant for Decadent, he decided to revisit the drama. He had a couple of reasons, he explains.

“When you apply for a touring grant for a play, it helps to have done it before and that it was a success”.

The Arts Council were convinced and funded the production which will have a six-week run, touring to 14 venues in twelve counties after Galway, including three in Dublin.

“There’s a large appetite for it from venues,” Andrew says, something that’s partly due to the excellent reviews Decadent’s previous production received, when it wasn’t grant-aided.

Andrew’s second reason is because the play is “timeless”.

“None of us have been trapped in a cell, but we’ve had to deal with grief, sickness, love and loss. Everyone will recognise that if you are faced with extremes, there’s a strength, an inner spirit that gets you through, that helps you cope, get on and rise above.”

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.