The Hostage

Brendan Behan, the often-drunk Irish playwright, thinks most people are fools. In The Hostage, he tries to prove his point by mocking both the characters and the audience.

His play shows how prejudice, blind stupidity, and love of convention combine to kill an innocent young man, but it never lets the audience stop laughing. Even when the dead man rises, still wrapped in his shroud, to tell the audience it is going to hell, the viewers laugh and applaud--the threat comes in the form of a jingle. Behan fails to make his audience seem stupid; he merely demonstrates that a clever playwright can confuse his house.

The play is set in a Dublin lodging house inhabited by two whores, two homosexuals, a caretaker, and an old Englishman named Monsewer who came to fight for Ireland's independence 45 years ago and has never given up the cause. A Russian sailor, two officers of the Irish Republican Army, a few Catholic social workers and a Negro pizefighter named Princess Grace also drift across the stage.

The plot is simple. When an Irish boy is arrested in Belfast for killing a policeman, Monsewer's IRA colleagues kidnap a 19-year-old English soldier and bring him to the house as a hostage for the life of "the Bel-fast martyr." The soldier falls in love with a maid and makes friends with the other occupants, but when he begs them to help him escape, they refuse. There is a surprise ending, which we won't spoil for you.

Behan sneers at all his characters. His IRA soldiers fight fiercely for an utterly ridiculous cause. The social workers sing a parody on "Danny Boy" entitled "No One Loves You But Yourself." When the soldier demands to know why he is to die, the caretaker can only cite English atrocities to Ireland during the reign of Queen Victoria.

But the jokes are funny as the plot is bitter. The humor is broad ("Vat 69--that's the Pope's phone number"), there are lots of loud, funny songs, and people fly on and off the stage in the best slapstick tradition. You can't help laughing.

That's the trouble. By loading his play with comic lines and humorous situations, Behan makes his audience laugh confusedly through a tragedy. That they laugh may prove to Behan that they are fools, but to me it proves only that a skilled dramatist can confuse his audience.

The Charles production is a polished one. The actors, most of whom performed in the play off-Broadway last year, are excellent. The theater itself seems ideal for The Hostage; the stage, surrounded on three sides by the audience, facilitates the endless entrances and exits, and the characters' numerous remarks to the house seem less contrived with the audience so close. In any case, the Charles is always a nice place to see a play, and The Hostage is a good play to see.