Is this Quare Fellow a bit pointless?
Only female and non-binary actors star in new Abbey production of Behan’s prison play but…
The Quare Fellow Abbey Theatre Until 27 January HHHHH
TFEMALE CAST WAS DISTRACTING …WITHOUT ADVANCING THE PLAY’S THEME
he Abbey has been making a big thing out of its production of Brendan Behan’s The Quare Fellow, celebrating 100 years since Behan was born. It’s set in a men’s prison in 1954 just before an execution, at a time when hanging was still the penalty for murder. The main selling point in the production is having all 22 male roles in the play played by ‘15 female and nonbinary actors’.
According to director Tom Creed, it’s aimed at giving ‘a more truthful aspect of the characters’.
Imaginative innovation or a case of much ado about a pointless gesture giving greater scope to women without achieving much in terms of what the play is all about. Admittedly there’s always been a crossdressing streak in Shakespeare, mostly in the comedies, with the odd woman playing Hamlet or Lear, but it’s usually a publicity boost for the women involved.
It’s ironic that there’s no mention of the work put into the original production of The Quare Fellow by another woman, Carolyn Swift, who used her considerable skills to make the script presentable and who pushed Behan into getting it right before producing it in her little Pike Theatre in Dublin.
All we really want to know now is whether Behan’s play stands up well in the modern world, and whether it does a good job of attacking capital punishment.
For the inmate Dunlavin in The Quare Fellow, ‘Killing your wife is a natural class of a thing…’ robbers thieves and murderers I can abide, but this other dirty animal’ [the homosexual prisoner] is a ‘dirty beast’ and… ‘thanks be to God’ it’s only the murderer that’s in the cell beside him. The only character on stage who actually opposes the death penalty is the warder Regan.
The original Quare Fellow was described as a comedy drama, and there’s plenty of comedy mixed in with the serious dialogue. The man to be executed, the quare fellow of the title, who never appears on stage, is a nasty bit of goods who cut his victim up ‘like a pig’. The comedy however is more Porridge than the grim black comedy of Martin McDonagh’s Hangmen, and the prison life of the inmates is much more relaxed than the disturbing TV prison work of Jimmy Mc Govern’s Time.
But in the second half, The Quare Fellow is a disturbing look at the technicalities of hanging, going into great detail about the length of the fall, the noose, the measurements needed to ensure that the execution doesn’t become a grotesque episode of torture, and the unpleasant effect it has on warders and prisoners.
There’s no story as such, just the relationships between the various inmates. Creed has added some minor physical antagonism between them, but nothing that ever gets out of hand, and the language is a far cry from what you expect nowadays.
It’s a workmanlike production, but apart from a few instances, the female cast performing as men is a distraction that drew attention to itself without actually advancing the theme of the play.
Camille Lucy Ross is convincing as the staunchly religious inmate who’s all in favour of capital punishment and thinks hanging is too good for murderers.
Clare Barrett makes a good job of warder Regan, the only one who’s openly opposed to hanging, and Wren Dennehy does the cheeky satirical commentary on the execution seen as a horserace.
But I was never really convinced by Barbara Brennan’s old lag Dunlavin, the main comic role in the play, and some of the acting in lesser parts was below par.
Having the grave dug right on the edge of the stage was presumably to bring the reality of hanging right up front, but it distracted from some of the onstage dialogue around it: and having four inmates digging at the same time just looked unwieldy.
The emphasis on creating a gloomy atmosphere meant the second half, supported by mournful singing, dragged on a bit too long.
I was left wondering if somewhere down the track we’ll get an equally ‘truthful’ all-male cast in Lorca’s House Of Bernada Alba, with all seven women played by men.