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:

20 April 2005

From the Lebanon of the 1980s to the Iraq of today, the taking of hostages by militant groups remains a political weapon that – in its symbol of human helplessness and vulnerability to forces far bigger the individuals captured – is also highly potent emotionally. Just think of how the country was gripped last September when Ken Bigley, a 62-year-old British engineer, was captured in Baghdad with the two Americans he shared a house with there.

But also think of how the stakes have dramatically heightened, too. While the earlier hostage taking was a long and cruel process that saw Brian Keenan and John McCarthy - respectively then an Irish teacher in Beirut and a British journalist held for four-and-a-half and five years each by Islamic Jihad before being released - Bigley’s fate was far more immediate. Just over three weeks after his kidnapping, he was beheaded.

That knowledge changes, but in no way lessens, the alternately gruelling and gripping portrait of the strategie...

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Latest User Review

81.134.165.4) - 17 June 2005:

Seeing this x years after the original production makes you realise that it's a modern classic and is going to enter the repertory - people will be seeing revivals of this for years to come. This particular production benefits from three great actors at the top of their game and fine direction from Dominic Dromgoole. If only it was in a better theatre - the New Ambassadors is one of London's worst !...

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