While controversy rages about criminals who make money from selling their stories, a former IRA man has drawn on his experiences to bring to London a strongly authentic play about paramilitary terror. Danny Morrison joined the IRA more than 30 years ago. In the 1980s, he was spokesman for Bobby Sands MP, who died on hunger strike, and he received an eight-year prison sentence for his part in the abduction of Sandy Lynch, an IRA informer.
Morrison has long had a way with words, and is credited with inventing the phrase that first encapsulated the dual strategy of Sinn Fein and the IRA: "an Armalite in one hand and a ballot box in the other". The author of several books, he is now anxious that his theatre reviews might be merely ad hominem. Certainly, The Wrong Man deserves to be discussed on its considerable merits.
It opens with a kangaroo court. A man is tied to a chair, a black hood covering his head. His frenzied attempts to speak are muffled by a rubber bung in his mouth. He is accused of informing against a key terrorist operative. Two of his interro-gators relish beating him, but the third, Raymond, is a close friend, responsible for introducing him into the movement. Raymond feels a deep sense of betrayal, but it is mingled with compassion. None the less, "Tod" Malone is found guilty. Much of the rest of the play occurs in flashback, allowing the audience to decide whether the IRA condemned the wrong man.
The piece is skilfully constructed. The dialogue is laced with clues, little bells that ring in our mind as the events preceding Tod's arraignment are revealed. The audience members are turned into investigators and led to a clear conclusion. We are thus lured into moral hazard, because we take a view on whether the verdict of a terrorist "trial" was "just" or not. The suspense is well developed and sustained. The time-shifts are jerky and unannounced, a device that forces us to concentrate harder on the evidence Morrison presents to us.
The play closes with another interrogation. Before the IRA suspected Tod of informing, he was given a going-over by the Royal Ulster Constabulary. The play's first and last scenes are the most powerful. There is a good deal of violence in both and, thanks to Sarah Tipple's direction, it is wholly believable - remarkable, given that the audience is within a few feet of the actors. Chris Patrick-Simpson (Tod) must leave the theatre with a headache after his skull is repeatedly thumped on the table of the RUC's interview room.
During that grilling, however, Tod remains silent. In a clever theatrical device, one of the detectives takes the role of the suspect and pours out a confession to show Tod that the police know all about his involvement in the murder of an Ulster Defence Regiment volunteer. Tony Dev-lin is magnificent as the policeman who interprets Tod's anguish. The young man has a romantic attachment to the IRA, but he lacks the stomach for the reality of death. The RUC man reads him like a book and plays him like a character on stage.
Patrick-Simpson is physically well equipped to play the handsome ladies' man whose motto is: "Even if you are caught with your trousers down, deny, deny, deny." Tod's sexual peccadilloes and alleged political crimes become lethally intertwined. Brendan Mackey successfully balances Raymond's inhuman commitment to shooting and bombing with tenderness towards his wayward protege.
Morrison's work deserves to be judged according to its qualities, because his priority has been to write a compelling drama. This is not a polemic. Still, what its characters say about the IRA is important. Raymond is unable to sleep for the excitement of devising new murderous operations. His devotion to the cause leaves no room for his wife, Roisin (played by Nuala McGreevy). She curses him and the IRA for ruining her life, and encourages Tod to see that Raymond has destroyed him, too. Both she and the policemen believe that killing has become a way of life, a habit that has long outlived the real grievances that sparked Irish republican resistance.
By coincidence, Morrison and I debated with each other on a television programme early this month. He was there to give his view that the IRA's hold in Northern Ireland will not be shaken by its embarrassment over the murder of Robert McCartney, nor will Sinn Fein suffer at the polls. It feels awkward to share a studio with a man so closely associated with violence, even if he has renounced political activity since 1995. But I justified appearing with Morrison by arguing to myself that his dark history makes him worth hearing as an authority on the IRA. Similarly, the authenticity of his play goes beyond what another playwright could have achieved even with painstaking research. What's more, Morrison has an undeniable talent for theatre. The piece has its dramatic faults, but I rate it a clear success.
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