Taking No Prisoners

Prisoner of the Crown

The Irish Repertory Theatre

RICHARD F. Stockton's Prisoner of the Crown, currently playing at the Irish Repertory Theatre, begins in 1916 at the height of the British Empire, when Ireland, her oldest and most troublesome colony, makes a startling bid for independence.

History reminds us that bid was brutally crushed by the British government, which feared permitting Home Rule would start a chain reaction that would spell the end for the Empire. At the time it took a man like Sir Roger Casement, one of Ireland's most distinguished patriots, to understand that the collapse of the Empire was unavoidable anyway.

Stockton's play is based on the shocking details of Casement's trial, and we watch with increasing horror as backroom deals are made to secure his conviction. What unfolds over two acts is as strong a condemnation of British judicial malpractice as you are ever likely to see staged.

Director Ciaran O'Reilly has given this hard-hitting production a fast paced theatrical flair in keeping with the text. A rapid succession of scenes outline the details of Casement's life, then O'Reilly wisely pauses the action to explore its effect on the characters. With a script this episodic it can be difficult to keep an eye on all the principal players (there are 39 characters in all), and O'Reilly does well to focus the action and the narrative.

Casement was in many ways an unlikely Irish hero. A loyal subject of the British crown for most of his life, he had his eyes opened to the rough work that fueled the Empire while working for the British consular service. Posted to remote locations in Africa and South America, he won unexpected fame for his reports exposing the exploitation of the native peoples of the Belgian Congo and the Putumayo basin between Peru and Columbia.

Returning to Ireland, the parallels Casement saw between brutal imperial exploitation abroad and at home were unmistakable. The desperate poverty of the Irish people, their complete subjugation, appalled him and he resolved to act. Just two years after his knighthood he abandoned his career in the Foreign Service to join the Irish Nationalists, fighting for complete independence from Britain.

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