Endangered Species Project to Present Brendan Behan's THE HOSTAGE This July

The July Project: Brendan Behan's The Hostage!

In a dive of a Dublin hotel, a British soldier is held by the Irish Republican Army in retaliation for a young IRA man arrested and threatened with execution in Belfast by the British police. This is the central the situation in The Hostage, which is developed in every possible theatrical way - tragedy, comedy, satire, music, you name it - in this amazing work.

The Hostage is the English-language adaptation by Brendan Behan of his Irish-language original, An Giall, which was a naturalistic drama; Behan created the radically revised English version in a sometimes bumptious collaboration with the influential director Joan Littlewood, and it was a 1958 triumph for her London company, Theatre Workshop. Some parts of the play were improvised by the cast and director, by necessity - Behan's third act wasn't completed until the week before opening - with the playwright's either enthusiastic or grudging assent, depending when, where, or how far into his cups he was asked. There was a joke that went the theatrical rounds at the time that while Dylan Thomas wrote Under Milk Wood, Brendan Behan wrote "under Littlewood"... Nevertheless, however much the director's influence stretched the work from its origins, the result is shot through with Behan's humor and humanity, and it remains a groundbreaking classic.

The hotel in The Hostage is crammed full of mid-century down-and-outers: prostitutes, homosexuals, drunken wastrels. Each of these denizens has his or her opinions of the others, mostly low. But the arrival of Leslie, the hostage, who is even more despised by the Republicans outside than they are, makes him an object of sympathy and someone to rally round. A romance blossoms between Leslie and Teresa, a young hotel maid from the country. The IRA men collide with folks not nearly as doctrinaire as they are. Monsewer, the British expatriate owner, who has become a devotee of the Irish Free State (indeed, he's nearly the only one in the play who speaks Irish), finds himself feeling for Leslie both as a victim and as a fellow countryman. Pat, the manager, a former IRA man himself, is stuck between political allegiance and a cantankerous but forgiving nature. Meg, Pat's "consort," offers devastating criticisms of the entire situation. The styles and tones to the play are wildly different from scene to scene, and the effect is a sort of phantasmagoria of viewpoints, not only of the intensifying British/Irish conflict, but concerning the tensions between public and private opinions, and the general glories and difficulties of living in the world at all.

Here is what the British critic, Kenneth Tynan, wrote of the play at the time of its premiere: "Its theme is Ireland, seen through the bloodshot eyes of Mr Behan's talent...there are, in this production, more than twenty songs, many of them blasphemous or lecherously gay, some of them sung by the hostage himself...As with Brecht, actors step in and out of character so readily that phrases like 'dramatic unity' are ruled out of court: we are simply watching a group of human beings who have come together to tell a lively story in speech and song."

Brendan Behan was only 41 when he died of the complications of alcoholism and diabetes in 1964. He wrote poetry, plays (The Quare Fellow, also developed with Littlewood), and a magnificent memoir, The Borstal Boy. His life was tempestuous and difficult; his uproarious wit and obvious writing talent inspired fervent loyalty among his friends and fans, but his egoistic, self-destructive, sometimes violent behavior caused many of those friendships to erode by the end of his life. Much like Oscar Wilde, a good bit of his creative ingenuity went into the creation of his drunken-poet-ruffian public persona, and the myth of "Brendan Behan" has sometimes eclipsed the admittedly troubled, but brilliantly gifted writer underneath. (There's a wonderful 1999 biography, Brendan Behan: A Life by Michael O'Sullivan, for those interested in learning more about him, beyond reading his own works, all of which are worth the effort!)

In Seattle, The Hostage was recently given an airing by the University of Washington Drama Department; professionally, in the early 1990s, it was given an acclaimed production at the old Bathhouse Theatre Company, and the Seattle Rep mounted it back in 1966.

ESP's presentation, to be held in ACT's Allen Theatre, is being directed by ESP core member Richard Ziman, with music direction by Robertson Witmer (ESP's Dark of the Moon and The Good Person of Szechwan). The crackerjack Seattle cast includes...

Mark Anders*
Laura KennyShawn Belyea
Leslie Law*Christine Marie Brown*
Shannon LoysAndrew Creech
Charles McAleeseKeith Dahlgren
Jayne MuirheadAllen Fitzpatrick
Conner NeddersenAllen Galli*Daniel TierneySean Griffin
Robertson Witmer
*core member of ESP

Join us for this ESP book-in-hand presentation - it's going to be another astonishing one-night-only experience! July 13 at 7 p.m.! BUY TICKETS. Avoid online fees and purchase in person at the box office, open Tuesday through Sunday, 12-6pm. DIRECTIONS and PARKING AT ACT THEATRE. Learn more about who we are and our production history online at www.endangeredspeciesproject.org.

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