A haunting a cappella version of the ‘Magpie’ song sets the atmosphere as the audience filters in: beautifully harmonised Irish accented voices in minor notes. A man sits on a dirty mattress writing furiously in a leather-bound notebook with a tiny pencil, occasionally chalking days up on the wall in a five-bar gate style. Damp straw is strewn over the floor and the smell of it fills the air. The play hasn’t even begun and yet we know we are in a cell, he is a prisoner, and the place is fraught with tension.
Magpie is one of those rare productions that takes hold of you the second you enter, immerses you in its world with a tense grip. It’s 1923: Michael is the man in the cell. Why he is there unfolds in layers from his conversations with his prison guard, who by a twist of fate is actually his brother Patrick, previously a prisoner in this same jail. They have ended up on the opposite sides of the war in Ireland and as their stories unfold we see the tragic circumstances of exactly how this has occurred. This is a country’s story: it’s Ireland’s story – her history, seen through the prism of two brothers who have ended up opposite each other. “It’s when a young man is angry, those in power put him to their uses,” as Michael says, understanding too late how used he has been.
Michael, played by Andrew Cusack (who also writes – interestingly based on research within his own family), is the youngest brother out of originally five, yet he and his eldest Patrick, played by Johnjoe Irwin, the guard, are the only two remaining. The brother bond is so clear between their opposite characters you can almost feel it. Patrick is deliberately calm, having settled for an uneasy peace as he says “we’re all just tired of fighting”. Michael is fierce and feisty and goading, incredibly sarcastic, and slapping away any metaphorical hand of help including from the visiting priest played by Ronan Colfer who also directs. The priest’s tiredness at his obligations washes over everything in waves almost palpably. The soundscape alerts us to the visiting magpie who Michael sees sometimes as a comfort and sometimes there to taunt him: “one for sorrow” as the saying goes, yet despite his “what I wouldn’t give for a robin” retort, he befriends this bird, even naming him with an incredibly poignant and important true story he tells.
Right from the outset, we know Michael is suffering from PTSD or as they would have called it at the time: shell shock. It’s never mentioned, but the survivor’s guilt that breaks his sleep and makes him shout his nightmares – “I should have died in France!” – is evident. He thought he was being patriotic by signing up to the First World War, he thought he was doing his duty: but the men called him slurs because he was Irish, and the job he was given was to go and get dead bodies: “faces stuck in terror that mirrored my own,” as he says. Yet when he came home he was shunned, as he had fought for England; there was no recognition, no support, just blame. Hearing the stories of each of the brothers you can understand how this has all happened, due to choices that they inevitably made. The actors play these so perfectly, as opposite as their characters: what Patrick hides so much and what Michael shouts in taunts. Yet Michael perceptively says at one point “it should have been bricks and mortar for me and you, not bullets and guns”. “All these wars, measured in inches and individuals,” as Patrick says.
This is an intensely powerful piece, a gripping and visceral piece of theatre. It has vibrant raw energy and the inevitable ending is utterly heartbreaking. Yet it also finds the humour, the pathos, and has moments that you need while watching to breathe and lessen the tension. It’s absolutely perfectly crafted, from beginning to end. It’s rare that a production has everything: acting perfection, sound and lighting, direction, and richly layered writing steeped in factual history: so rich that some of the words are more poetry than lines in a play. And this production has it all. A faultless, flawless piece of theatre: fascinating, hugely impactful, brutally and beautifully unforgettable.
The Lantern Theatre, Thursday 30th May 2024
Magpie runs various dates 3rd May – 2nd June
Photos by Pigs Back Productions
