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Hostage drama Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me has audience locked in

Inspired by, rather than based on, the story of Brian Keenan and the Beirut hostages, Perth Theatre’s production of Frank McGuiness’ play Someone Who'll Watch Over Me is absorbing drama

By Robert Dawson Scott

15 February 2012 12:40 GMT

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Brian Keenan, Terry Waite and John McCarthy; when they were abducted by Hezbollah militia in Beirut in the 1980s and held captive for more than four years, their names were a constant presence in the media. Keenan in particular inspired Frank McGuiness to write what must, by any standards, surely be considered a great modern play.

If it all sounds like a long time ago, just ask anyone affected by the more recent industrial-scale hostage taking off the Somalia coast, or even those incarcerated without trial at Guantanamo Bay (I’m not the first to make that link – just ask Waite). The experience of being locked up a long way from home, cut off from the rest of the world, uncertain from day to day as to whether you are likely to live or die, doesn’t change much.

In Rachel O’Riordan’s gripping new production for Perth Theatre, the time could be anywhere after 1977 to now – and the only reason 1977 figures is because that was the year that Virginia Wade won the Wimbledon Ladies Singles, one of the sporting events that the captives re-run, to great comic effect, to keep their spirits up. This is only the third show she has brought to her new post but on the basis of what we have seen you would have to say she is more confident with the modern repertoire than the classics. Certainly there is an emotional truthfulness here and an unfussy clarity.

There are three men here, too, an American, an Ulsterman and an Englishman. And on Gary McCann’s subtly but disturbingly skewed set, they are chained to the walls, underground, just as Keenan, Waite and McCarthy were. How do you survive? Each has their own strategy. Adam, the American, exercises feverishly. Edward is the one for the horses and the jokes – a lot of jokes, in an attempt to stop their captors hearing them weeping, the only alternative. Michael, the slightly effete, apparently hopelessly ineffectual Englishman, arrives later, changing the dynamic as they all size each other up all over again.

It changes again when Adam disappears, probably killed, and the Ulsterman and the Englishman are left alone together. And there is , literally, a chink of light at the end when the steel door swings open to reveal a flight of steps up towards the bright Mediterranean sunlight when Edward is released.

None of these events are explained, as they would not be. The sense that the whole play has the echoes of that great unexplained wait for Godot has been noted many times and seems as true as ever. But what emerges are potent sketches of the human spirit, unlikely relationships and inter-dependencies, and the bizarre comedy of life.

It needs good performances, and it gets them here, Robert Morgan in particular as the Englishman. At first it seemed as if his cringing defeatism would quickly seem mannered and put on. Instead, his whole body a rictus of defeat and uncertainty, he becomes the strongest of the lot.

Someone who'll Watch Over Me - Perth Theatre until February 25