Agreement
Lyric Theatre, Belfast
★★★★★
The 25th anniversary of the signing of the Belfast Agreement is fast approaching. To recognise this landmark, Agreement, a searing new play by Owen McCafferty, has its premiere at Belfast’s Lyric Theatre.
This tight-knit ensemble piece is a compelling political thriller with echoes of Greek drama. It is astutely directed by Charlotte Westenra, the guiding hand behind McCafferty’s Titanic: Scenes from the British Wreck Commissioner’s Inquiry, 1912, a large-scale piece of verbatim theatre that was the inaugural production of the Mac in Belfast in 2012.
Conor Murphy’s design sets the ricocheting arguments and counterarguments between the main players inside a faceless, claustrophobic circular space with a single round window to the sky (by the video designer Eoin Robinson), a goldfish bowl of feverish political manoeuvring, scrutinised in detail by the global media.
Central to progress, yet constantly sidelined by the men in suits, is the terminally ill secretary of state for Northern Ireland, Mo Mowlam, barefoot, bewigged and inelegant
As the title suggests, McCafferty’s ingeniously conceived, fictional narrative, commissioned by the London producing house MGC, is as much about agreement as the Agreement; he relentlessly peels away interlocking layers of compromise, dislike and distrust to reveal a fraught, painstaking journey towards an acceptable solution to a stubbornly intractable problem.
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The result is a nimble dance to the music of politics, deftly choreographed by Dylan Quinn. The major players, John Hume, David Trimble, Gerry Adams, Tony Blair, Bertie Ahern and the US senator George Mitchell, step forward, back and side to side, both as their individual real-life characters and as the collective voices of their communities and constituencies.
Central to progress, yet constantly sidelined by the men in suits, is the terminally ill secretary of state for Northern Ireland, Mo Mowlam (a finely judged performance by Andrea Irvine), barefoot, bewigged and inelegant. Her disarming but shrewd ability to charm, cajole and glad-hand the warring parties had prepared much of the groundwork before the arrival of the cavalry, in the shape of Rufus Wright’s preening, self-regarding Tony Blair, the vehicle for much of the play’s satirical humour.
Mowlam’s is the sole woman’s voice on stage, a smart nod by McCafferty to the conspicuous absence in the room of representatives of the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition, whose influential, behind-the-scenes diplomacy provided the mortar between the wobbly bricks of the negotiations.
Tension builds as the clock ticks and the politicians inch towards striking their Belfast agreement, each one nervously balancing the imperative to reach accommodation with the necessity of appeasing voters. Assiduously avoiding any hint of impersonation, every detail of characterisation and body language is captured with uncanny credibility, from Patrick O’Kane’s clenched, conflicted Trimble to Dan Gordon’s dishevelled, pragmatic Hume and Packy Lee’s wily, immovable Adams.
Hopping and skipping between them are Wright’s impatient Blair and Ronan Leahy’s deceptively folksy Bertie Ahern, who is juggling delicate proceedings in Belfast with the death of his mother in Dublin.
As the deadline passes and the clock is reset, the outside world starts to seep in, the stakes get higher, emotions boil over and exhaustion sets in. Can a deal be done? Can these old enemies finally deliver the repeated mantra of Richard Croxford’s persuasive honest broker Mitchell: “Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed”?
Agreement runs at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast, until Saturday, April 22nd, as part of the Imagine! Belfast festival 2023
