The Hostage (play)

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The Hostage is a 1958 translation to English, of the Gaelic play An Giall, by its author, Brendan Behan.

[edit] Plot

The Hostage depicts the events surrounding the execution of an 18 year old IRA member in a Belfast jail, accused of killing an Ulster policeman. Like the protagonist of the The Quare Fellow, the audience never sees him. The action of the play is set in a very odd house of ill-repute somewhere in Dublin, owned by a former IRA commandant. The hostage of the title is Leslie Williams, a young and innocent Cockney British soldier taken at the border with Northern Ireland and held in the brothel, brought among the vibrant but desperately unorthodox combination of prostitutes, revolutionaries and general low characters inhabiting the place.

During the course of the play, a love story develops between Leslie and Teresa (a young girl, resident of the house), who promises never to forget him. The play ends with news of the hanging in Belfast and when the Gardaí attack the brothel. Leslie is killed in the ensuing gunfight, by police bullets. In the finale his corpse rises and sings:

The bells of hell

Go ting-a-ling-a-ling

For you but not for me.

Oh death, where is thy sting-a-ling-a-ling

Or grave thy victory?

The principle themes of the play are innocence set against the political motives and ambitions of others; and the arbitrary power of authority. It examines the Anglo-Irish relationship, and the Irish themselves. Behan uses Brecthtian techniques of directly addressing the audience, using song and dance to offset the tragedy of the situation.

[edit] Performance

An Giall was first performed at the Damer Theatre, Dublin in 1957. It was then translated into English, by Behan, and had its London première at Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop at the Theatre Royal Stratford East, in 1958. It subsequently transferred to the West End theatre and Broadway. Theatre Workshop used improvisational theatre to develop performance, and the text was revised during production, in a collaboration between Behan, Littlewood and the cast.

The play was the West End début of actor Stephen Lewis.