“On paper, everything ticked the box in this production, yet I rarely forgot the actors were working from a script or following stage directions. I never became emotionally involved with the characters or action, and the harrowing plot line, with three hostages stuck in a Lebanon prison, made this all the more disappointing.” Imogen Sarre ★★★★★

Someone who’ll watch over me ★★★★★

Review by Imogen Sarre

This is a contentious three stars, given not because the production wasn’t good, with solid, focused and energetic acting, but because it wasn’t great. The play contained all the right ingredients: a harrowing, emotional plot line, with moments of dark humour, anger and despair. It should have been an emotional rollercoaster. It wasn’t.

The script is partly to blame. The subtleties and intricacies of prison life weren’t implicit, but rammed down your throat. As an audience member, I like to be able to do some of the work. The contrast between Edward’s letter, written to his wife and family, and the widowed Michael’s letter, written for his mother, would have made for a poignant moment if left at that. Instead, by making it explicit by having a full on argument about it, all impact was lost.

The script might have worked better with a director and cast not quite so enthusiastic to take advantage of every potentially dramatic moment. They followed acting cliché after cliché and dragged them out until they were made void: having a literal nose to nose argument may sometimes work to increase the tension, but when it goes on for a whole five minutes it just made me start thinking about the uncomfortable nature of such close proximity, and how you’d have to hope the other actor didn’t have bad breath or spit.

Don’t get me wrong: I think trying hard to maintain energy and retain the audience’s interest is extremely important. I just think that the obvious means by which they tried to do so might have worked better with another script, or in another setting. Months on end in a Lebanon prison cell, malnourished, with no light or prospect of hope or release, would surely not result in quite so many demonstrations of physical energy. If the actors had seemed a bit more muted, defeatist and bored, the contrast between their stifled action and passionate words would have presented an interesting and subtle juxtaposition which, ironically, would probably have been far more dramatically effective. It might have suggested their physical powerlessness, incarcerated as they were, and that the only way they could retain a sense of individuality or any control was through the words they used. The script raises this idea when the prisoners discuss their need to laugh, not cry, in order to feel they have some sort of power over the guards. A bit more quiet limpness on stage might also have conveyed more convincingly a sense of time stretching out unendingly, the importance of which had already been highlighted by references to months passed and the men’s different positions on stage. More evidence of boredom on stage could have made the play a flop and a failure, boring the audience with the lack of action; at the same time, if they managed to pull it off, it would have had the potential to be a huge success. Going for the safe option, the middle ground, makes this play decidedly unspectacular, although enjoyable enough.

The Englishman, Irishman and American were stereotypes, but sustained well throughout, despite a couple of vocal stumbles. There were several very effective moments: I particularly enjoyed when the Irishman sang a folk song and the three men moved in a circle around the stage, chains moving with them, stamping their feet and clapping their hands. I also liked the following scene, when ‘Amazing Grace’ was sung, though slightly dodgily, by the American. This was one of the rare, and welcome, moments in the play when everyone on stage was still and sombre.  The whole production could have done with a bit more silence and a bit less fidgeting. The (extremely impressive) press ups and fanatical exercise regimes undertaken by the American and, later, the Irishman, would have been more comprehensible if we had got a sense of how much time must have been spent sitting around doing nothing.

There were some great moments of humour, often absurd and created in the main by the Irishman and the increasing madness of the inmates. A comic highlight for me was the pretend tennis game played by the Englishman and Irishman as they re-lived the 1977 women’s finals at Wimbledon. Hopping around gorilla-style and scoring childish points off one another showed effectively the juvenility grown men are reduced to when they have to provide their own entertainment.

On paper, everything ticked the box in this production, yet I rarely forgot the actors were working from a script or following stage directions. I never became emotionally involved with the characters or action, and the harrowing plot line, with three hostages stuck in a Lebanon prison, made this all the more disappointing. It is an extremely challenging situation for actors to portray realistically or for audience members to relate to. Considering the cast and director were very dramatically accomplished (just look at their credentials in the programme), I can’t help thinking that their main problem was with the choice of script.