Someone Who'll Watch Over Me

Synopsis

An Englishman, an Irishman and an American are locked up together in a cell in the Middle East - victims of political action. They are totally powerless to bring about change or to satisfy the hopes of their captors. They are pawns in a bigger game and could be sacrificed on the altar of political expediency at any time. What can they do? How do they survive each day? Brian Keenan said of this play: "A life-enhancing interaction of human souls..McGuiness with his words and imaginative power walked into a plalce 'where angels fear to tread', and came out dazzling".

Our Review:

8 May 2012

The 20th anniversary production of Frank McGuinness’s Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me takes its audience to a Lebanon hostage cell in which languish Adam (American), Edward (Irish) and Michael (British). By turns they attempt to both predict and ward off and their fate using futile hypotheses, tales of home and illusory game-play. With its winding access and vague rumblings, Southwark Theatre is a venue worthy of Simon Kenny’s inspired set design which alone makes this production worth a visit.

Beirut may no longer occupy the same place in popular consciousness that it did when the play was first performed but there are obvious contemporary comparisons that make the play’s identity politics dishearteningly relevant.

Questions surrounding the relationship between nation and individual come to the fore when nationality is the basis for unlawful imprisonment; the emotional extremes resulting from the characters’ encounters with their...

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