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Author
Frank McGuiness
Producer
Background
Productions
Director
Dominic
Dromgoole
Design
Anthony Lamble
Performer
Jonny Lee
Miller
Aidan Gillen
David Threlfall
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The
New Ambassador
16 April
- 22 May 2003 |
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It's
probably been something everyone
has afforded a fleeting thought
to: 'what would I do, how
would I behave, would I retain
any sanity if I was stripped
of my liberty to walk free?'
For most of us it remains
an academic pursuit into the
realms of grim fantasy, but
for three men, Adam, Edward
and Michael, it's real in
Frank McGuinness's 'Someone
Who'll Watch Over Me'.
And Frank McGuinness has clearly
thought and thought and thought
himself into what must have
been a mad-making, soul-searching
but inspirationally imaginative
flight of fancy, and from
this came his play which observes
strangers coping, or not coping,
in captivity.
Adam, an American Doctor,
Edward, an Irish journalist,
and Michael, a very British
academic are held hostage
in Beirut. Their journeys
to their capture are only
faintly sketched, and their
reason for captivity even
more opaque, which leaves
us in the claustrophobic company
of three characters brought
together incidentally and
confined by four small walls
day after night after day
(although who can tell which?).
Jonny Lee Miller's Adam is
first to be captured and we
join the scene a month into
second hostage Edward's confinement.
They are good friends and
supporters of each another,
and the entrance of third
hostage Michael (David Threlfall)
seems to upset the balance
and for a while each man is
his own and each other's worst
enemy. David threatens the
cosy security of two-man partnership,
but perhaps the threat to
Edward runs deeper as his
feelings for Adam seem to
hint at something more than
just companionship.
What then when Adam is taken
by his captors and killed?
Then the play reaches it's
masterful peak when two enemies
out of sheer desperation forage
in the dark for some middle
ground and the result is deeply
moving, uplifting and tragic
all at once.
What's nice to witness is
Frank McGuinesses's sparklingly
creative use of imagination
and fantasy, so that we are
permitted access to scenarios
outside of the confines of
the room but within each characters'
minds: imaginary letters home,
nights out drinking gin martinis,
long car drives, visits to
deceased relatives' graves
- some playful, some mournful,
some therapeutic.
It's hard to imagine this
ever played, or to have been
played, by any other three
men than Jonny Lee Miller,
Aiden Gillen and David Threlfall,
whose dynamic is beautifully
and inspirationally portrayed.
As Adam, Miller makes a faultlessly
convincing wholesome and introspective
American Doctor whose gentleness
contrasts nicely with Gillen's
upfront cocky Irishman Edward.
Threlfall's Michael is adorable
and hilarious and sophisticatedly
layered despite his caricatured
appearance. And it's worth
emphasising that at times
this play, thanks mainly to
Threlfall, is extremely funny
indeed.
Superlatives can be a lazy
and sometime belittling form
of flattery, but nevertheless
I say with conviction that
Someone Who'll Watch Over
Me is the best thing I've
seen in a long time.
Peggy Nuttall |
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