Agreement by Owen McCafferty at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast on the 29th March 2023
Agreement by Owen McCafferty at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast on the 29th March 2023
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| The negotiations leading up to the Good Friday Agreement in Lyric Theatre's production of 'Agreement' |
Agreement is being produced to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, a historic settlement of a period known as ‘the troubles’. There is a lot of material to work from but a great deal of it involves tedious, unending backroom dialogues, disputes, antagonisms, some of which are depicted in the play. That’s unpromising in terms of drama but Owen McCafferty does offer us the ingredients for a play which reaches into that lost period and extracts a sizeable portion of pathos and comedy. The director Charlotte Westenra portrays the characters and their conflicts through the lens of a reduced mise en scene and a sparsity of intrusive elements such as music which is present, however, as an electro-synth beat that intrudes subtly at the beginning and end of scenes.
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| Richard Croxford as Senator George Mitchell |
The characters involved in the deal appear, Mitchell, Adams, Mowlam, Hume, Trimble, and Bertie Ahern. They are all middle-aged, experienced politicians and have been active in other ways too. Ian Paisley is notable by his absence because he decided to walk out over guns and the release of prisoners. Mowlam is the only female presence, a key negotiator, who is sometimes depicted wearing a wig and sometimes wigless since she was then receiving chemotherapy. There is a round stage surmounted by a round interactive board which sometimes offers us text, for instance details of Strand One, Two, and Three of the agreement, but also the weather. The weather report is an important objective correlative in the play for the mood music of the time.
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| Andrea Irvine as Mo Mowlam |
The mise en scene
is simple and functional, the barest desks and chairs, phones and lamps in a
backroom illuminated by spotlights, and with heavy, expressive shadows into
which the characters either emerge or seem to fall. This foregrounds the dialogue, which is made
to do its work, indeed much of the dialogue is very banal and what is expected
but scenes of heightened emotional power emerge from the rather trite and
uninspiring details of the agreement.
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| Dan Gordon as John Hume and Patrick O'Kane as David Trimble |
Bertie Ahern, played by
Ronan Leahy, emerges as a power broker whose connections with the past are
being severed and then re-established.
He comes from a staunchly Republican background and is Irish Taoiseach (although some of his academic credentials seem to have gone missing). He enters the fray just as his mother dies, thus a major theme of the
play is the rejection of the past in favour of a brighter tomorrow, the dead
hand of previous generations loosened.
His relationship with the other major players, Blair, Trimble, Adams is
foregrounded but the first to speak is George Mitchell, US Special Envoy for
Northern Ireland, played by Richard Croxford.
He is seen to be juggling knives and balloons, an impossible act but
done with aplomb. His handler Bill
Clinton also appears, a booming voice on the end of a phone, a theatrical deus
ex machina or wonderful Wizard of Oz. The ensemble cast hardly put a foot wrong
throughout the evening.
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| Lyric Theatre production of Agreement by Owen McCafferty |
A smoky atmosphere is evoked by lots of billowing smoke as if someone set a rubbish bin alight. Into this low-key atmosphere arrives Tony Blair, British Prime Minister. Blair yells and screams at Mowlam, indeed the rest of the characters do so but Blair also implies ‘my aim is to get a deal.’ Blair is a man who eats sandwiches and Mars Bars and never flinches from using F### in any suitable situation or, indeed, at any time. Blair realises that everyone he deals with is also dealing in turn with the rank and file of their movements, he still cannot understand why everything moves so slowly. He seems like a fish out of water whereas Mo Mowlam is beginning to understand the local ways although she is even now, implicitly, an outsider.
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| Packy Lee as Gerry Adams and Dan Gordon as John Hume |
Adams implies ‘all those years of distrust’ and ‘Trimble has to get it into his head that the north is still part of Ireland.’ Trimble declares ‘Adams will walk’ (as Paisley did) and ‘Adams wants to break up the UK’. The ineluctability of the past is maintained during a meeting with Trimble in a urinal. The scene is re-staged to delve deeper into the relationship between Adams and Trimble and this self-reflexivity foregrounds the negotiated nature of the deal making process and history itself,
Trimble: grow up
Adams: grow up – refusing to engage is that grown
up – David
Trimble: hand over your guns
Adams: that’s not it – I know you say it is but
it’s not
Trimble: it is – I will not negotiate with anyone who
has a gun under the table
Adams: not anyone – Republicans
Both men convict each other of puerile shallowness and are unable to
surmount years of intransigence and bigotry.
Trimble declares ‘Adams wants to break up the UK’ just as Trimble
requires a partitioned Ireland.
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| Ronan Leahy as Bertie Ahern |
The episodic framework of
the play reflects the structure of the Agreement. Everyone is convinced that ‘we are not
returning to the old Stormont’ but emerging into an unknown future. The solution is a PR system advocated by
Mowlam and (a D’Hondt system is also implied) the basis of the new Northern
Ireland Assembly which also has some unique checks and balances including
parallel consent and a weighted majority which have clarified themselves over
the years since the agreement.
Hume: there’s willing to talk and there’s
willing to talk – we’re willing to talk – but – we’re not willing to talk
Mowlam: ( to Audience ) I’ll pretend I understand
that - maybe I’ve been here too long
because in a way I sort of do understand it –
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| Rufus Wright is Tony Blair |
There is no stopping the
inexorable march of history. The lone
absent figure, Ian Paisley, is now part of yesterday,
Newsreader ( voiceover ) - there was
another time when all that would’ve mattered more than it does now – a
government spokesperson with long experience in northern ireland said – once he
would’ve brought thousands – tens of thousands with him – now a few hundred –
look at those loyalists many of them once thought him a god – they went out and
killed thinking he was saving the union – now they’ve turned on him – it is the
end of an era - time moves on without favour or mercy – and now the weather –
howling winds coupled with bouts of driving rain – you couldn’t make this stuff
up – well you could and people often do – back to the talks – and one last
thing – the views expressed in this broadcast are not mine nor that of the good
people I work for – that’s all I’m saying – don’t shoot the messenger
Among the tumult of
contending voices, a movement towards consensus is building, even if forces of
discontent persist in remaining on the fringes of the peace process, uncertain
about what exactly will come next. Agreement
generates definite dramatic energy and begins to define the past and
perhaps to become part of the history making process. The drama smooths away the chaos of history
to show us a clear vision of the moment that we now occupy, even if in a rather
tenuous or inconclusive manner.
Paul Murphy, Belfast, March 2023
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