#13. Someone Who'll Watch Over Me

Joseph Timms, photo by Robert Workman

Someone Who'll Watch Over Me by Frank McGuinness

Premiere: Hampstead Theatre, London (July 1992)

Published by Faber Plays
Running at the Minerva, Chichester Festival Theatre 10 Sept - 10 Oct 2015. Tickets available here.

With the announcement of a new production being mounted at Chichester Festival Theatre, it seemed timely to have a read of Frank McGuinness' seminal play about three hostages caught in the crosshairs of conflict in Lebanon, based on real experiences.

It is a taut three-hander, people by an American, an Irishman and an Englishman. Sounds like the set up of a joke, and indeed Frank McGuinness does find a great deal of humour in the play. It reaches, at times, levels of absurdity to rival Beckett's Waiting for Godot with the characters similarly trapped in senseless waiting, at the behest of an unseen, external power. It is a sort of gallows humour, as particularly American Adam begins to lose his rationality and even, almost, his sanity. 

Also similar to Godot, 'not much happens'. There is not a great deal of plot, of action in the traditional sense. We see three man, degraded and forced in to a windowless, timeless, airless room together, struggling to cling on to the last remnants of their civility, their masculinity, their sanity. McGuinness is incredibly perceptive in his writing of the three men. Their conversations are profound and yet everyday, witty and dark all at the same time. The differences in their national identities are fully explored, led by the lucid, articulate Irishman, Edward, who emerges as the centre of the play. Edward is a brilliant, naturally garrulous man who talks more than either of the others. McGuinness makes the most of his own natural affinity with lyrical Irish verbosity so that Edward becomes almost showman-like in his command of the room.

There is a very moving, powerful undercurrent that runs beneath the laughing bravado of the three men; a damning examination of the human collateral of conflict.

Billy Carter
Photo by Robert Workman

To forestall despair, the three engage in make believe. These are brilliant sequences, which range from envisaging their own films, to enjoying cocktails at a swish party and even flying home in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang! There is a beautiful pathos in the joy of these scenes, and the men's need to indulge in fantasy is convincingly portrayed.

There is a very moving, powerful undercurrent that runs beneath the laughing bravado - or the stiff-upper-lip, in the case of Englishman Michael - of the three men. It is a damning examination of the human collateral of conflict, leaving no nation wholly innocent, and the timeliness of this sadly doesn't seem to be diminishing any time soon. It could just as easily be about Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria as it is about the Lebanon conflict. 

Robin Soans
Photo by Robert Workman

Reading this play brought me to an interesting consideration. It is not an easy read; it takes real perseverance (as Beckett does). Their appropriately inane, cyclical conversations seem to last as long as their internment. That contrasts with the eminently readable Thorne or Ridley plays. But I would argue that it is because this isn't a play written to be read. Some plays read well on the page, springing to life in their imagery and dialogue. On the other hand, many must be performed for their true power to be appreciated; the likes of Shakespeare and indeed Beckett spring to mind. These plays are hard reads, not to say they don't yield some gems of their own on the page, but are not meant to be read. Shakespeare had absolutely no intention of it, for instance. One of these tendencies does not win over the other, but it is certainly interesting to consider the difference in style here.

In the case of Someone Who'll Watch Over Me, the contrast between the voices in terms of dialect, and the powerful visual dictated by the situation are ever-present in performance, but in the play these can slip from immediate consideration. It is a powerfully visual play, with the three men chained down, restricting their potential movements, and the presence or absence of one of the men is profoundly affecting in the way the space reads to an audience. 

As such, I for one am excited to see Michael Attenborough's production at the Chichester Festival Theatre. Although intriguing on the page, McGuinness' writing suggests an incredible power that is given wings in performance. 

Cast of Jessica Swales 2012 production at the Southwark Playhouse. Photo by Robert Workman.

Running at the Minerva, Chichester Festival Theatre 10 Sept - 10 Oct 2015. Tickets available here.
Buy on Amazon here.