Theatre reviews: Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me | Mwana
SOMEONE WHO’LL WATCH OVER ME
Perth Theatre
Rating: ****
MWANA
Tron Theatre, Glasgow
Rating: ***
AS THE WEST seems doomed to re-learn every decade – in Iraq, or Afghanistan, or now Libya – the imperial impulse is a folly that exacts a terrible, lingering price, first from those who are colonised, and then, in the fullness of time, from those who once thought of themselves as their masters. It’s difficult to believe that it’s now more than a quarter of a century since the Irishman Brian Keenan and the Englishman John McCarthy were taken hostage in Beirut, and thrown into captivity in a series of grim cellars and rooms across the city’s southern suburbs.
Yet as Frank McGuinness’s magnificent 1992 play Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me, based on their ordeal makes clear, no pair of western hostages were ever more acutely aware of their position in history; of the enduring reasons why westerners in the Middle East are seen as legitimate targets by some armed groups, and of the rage that drives such action.