Originally published by L.S. Media. April 30th 2010.

Cast: Billy Clarke, Chris Corrigan, Marty Maguire, Andy Moore, Marc O’Shea, David Craig, Paul Boyd, Conleth White, Paul Burke, Elaine Barnes, Deidre Ashe.

Carefully mixing humour with the despair and hope, The Chronicles of Long Kesh is possibly one of the most important plays to have come to Liverpool.

Superbly written by Martin Lynch, the play deals with the dark days of the seventies and early eighties when the troubles in Ireland were hitting new lows and the relationships between neighbours were more than strained.

The cast have arguably one of the hardest tasks in keeping the sense of propriety that is needed and the ability to show that there were many victims in the whole affair. Through the eyes and words of Prison Officer Freddie, played brilliantly by Billy Clarke, he describes how the men coped with internment, and its effect on certain individuals, himself included. The story deals with three sides, the Prison Officers, the Republican prisoners who were made up of Eamonn, Motown and Smokie Robinson devotee Oscar and innocent Toot and the Loyalist prisoners of Thumper and Hank.

The three characters who seem to go through dramatic change are Freddie whose marriage starts to suffer as he turns more and more to drink to get him through being responsible for the men under his care, Republican Hank whose slow degeneration into despair and finally hope is heart jerking and too see him get back on top of his life after his wife leaves with his first child via of his love for music is a high point of the play. The third character is Eamonn who disassociated himself from it all to begin with, only to become one of the leading men in Long Kesh. Chris Corrigan’s portrayal of one of the men closest to Bobby Sands, the Blanket Protest and the eventual Hunger Strike is nothing short of excellent.

One of the most poignant moments of the play is towards the end where both Republican Toot and Loyalist Hank were released from the prison at the same time, they spoke together with warmth in the van, even asking how long they had spent in jail and wondering why they had never met.

One of the most thought provoking plays to have been staged at the Everyman in many years, diligent to the past and a reminder to the future to never let this happen again.

Ian D. Hall