Roger Casement was arrested, tried and executed for his part in the Easter Rising in in 1916. Landed from a German submarine on the West coast of Ireland, Casement's treason against the British government is an open and shut case. But this traitor to the Crown is a complex and contradictory figure: a Knight of the Realm, an Irish Protestant, a British Colonial diplomat and the man who heroically and famously exposed and reported evidence of genocide and slavery in the rubber trade in the Belgian Congo and South America. Read more …
As the bloody aftermath to the Rising plays out and thousands, many of them Irishmen, die at the Somme, there is the question of what to do with this inconvenient Ulsterman? And what to do with the evidence uncovered by Reginald Hall of Naval Intelligence that Casement is an active homosexual. Will it be used to destroy him?
Was Casement a hero, a martyr, a traitor or perhaps all three? Arnott’s riveting new play commissioned for Mayfesto to mark the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising, will help you decide.
Over eighty-minutes of cut and thrust punctuated by flashbacks that sees each scene captioned as a misplaced file might be, Arnott gets to the core of both men with forensic insight in this most intimate of psychological thrillers.
This is a work that feels utterly relevant, re-considering this hero, martyr and traitor against the wider backdrop of post-referendum Scotland and the re-imagining of sexual identity happening on both sides of the Irish border.
Near-perfect craftsmanship, high political intelligence, and sheer dramatic force.
Arnott’s play is a dense piece of writing that occasionally labours under the weight of its historical backstory.
Balancing the political and the personal, Shall Roger Casement Hang? is a moving and complicated dissection of an often ignored aspect of the path to Irish self-determination.
Tron Theatre, Glasgow from Friday May 20, 2016, until Saturday May 28, 2016. More info: www.tron.co.uk
RSS feed of Theatre reviews