In the Lyric Theatre’s Irish premiere of Terry George’s taut prison drama, staged by Brassneck Theatre Company, Long Kesh in 1976 is rendered not as a single political headline, but as a claustrophobic ecosystem — a place where boredom, discipline, and dread coexist in equal measure.
The “Cages” — a nickname that strips away any pretence of civility — are presented as both home and battlefield.
Days drag in a haze of routine: endless card games broken by rounds of Monopoly, where the cruellest laugh comes from landing on the square that sends you to gaol — irony sharp enough to cut. Tea steams from battered mugs, and the illicit burn of poitÃn, distilled from whatever could be scavenged, warms hands and guts alike.
These small rituals keep the men sane, a reminder of agency in a place designed to strip it away. Yet beneath the mundane is a rigid military order. Among the prisoners, there are ranks, roles, and the quiet enforcement of discipline; among the guards, there is an equally regimented machine, its orders flowing from a state determined to break its political captives. The result is a simmering mutual hatred, not born of misunderstanding but of two sides who know each other all too well.
The paranoia is palpable. Every casual glance can be suspicion; every overheard word might be evidence. The play’s most harrowing beats come when informers are outed — not by the captors, but by their fellow inmates. These moments peel back layers of coercion: men speak of the ways the British turned them — isolation, threats to family, broken bodies and spirits — and yet, their confessions buy them no mercy. In the prison’s closed world, being “turned” is not seen as survival, but as a moral death sentence.
As the rattle of construction grows louder, the men sense their future shrinking. The new prison complex, designed for “criminalisation,” looms as a symbol of erasure: stripping them of political status and rebranding them as common criminals. Against this backdrop, the planned tunnel breakout is both desperate and defiant. Some want to return to the fight, others simply want to disappear into civilian life, but all are acutely aware that escape could just as easily lead to a shallow grave as to freedom.
George’s direction spares us sentimentality; instead, he offers a grimly authentic portrait of a war fought in whispers, stares, and small acts of defiance. The ensemble’s performances capture the contradictions of life behind the wire — camaraderie laced with mistrust, discipline undermined by human weakness, and the constant weighing of survival against loyalty.
This is not just a prison break story; it’s a study of what happens when political struggle is forced into a pressure cooker, when human endurance is tested not by battles in the open, but by the grinding attrition of captivity. The Tunnel leaves you asking whether freedom is a place, a principle, or simply the absence of fear — and whether any of these are truly attainable in Long Kesh, 1976. The H-Blocks rising just beyond the wire are not merely a backdrop; they are the harbingers of a deadlier chapter to come — the anti-criminalisation protests that would culminate in the 1981 Hunger Strike, a grim stand-off that left ten men dead and seared itself into the history of the conflict.
Great review - would make me want to see that play
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