Someone Who'll Watch Over Me

Last updated

Someone Who'll Watch over Me is a play written by Irish dramatist Frank McGuinness. The play focuses on the trials and tribulations of an Irishman, an Englishman and an American (Edward, Michael, and Adam) who are kidnapped and held hostage by unseen Arabs in Lebanon. As the three men strive for survival they also strive to overcome their personal and nationalistic differences. Related to this is each individual's own attempt to maintain sanity under the watchful eye of both captors and supposed comrades. At times the dramatic dialogue reaches a level of Beckettian absurdity, as even the audience is unable to draw a distinction between the characters' insanity and humour. We are made witness and accomplice to a humour based on something apparently ghastly, the loss of rationality.

Contents

Productions

The play was first staged in July 1992, at the Hampstead Theatre, London and transferred to the West End Vaudeville Theatre, September-October 1992.

It was produced on Broadway at the Booth Theatre, opening on 29 May 1992 and closing on 13 June 1993, after 292 performances and 2 previews. Directed by Robin Lefevre, it starred Stephen Rea (Edward), James McDaniel (Adam), and Alec McCowen (Michael); Michael York took the Michael role late in the play's run. It received Tony Award nominations for Best Play and Best Actor in Play (Stephen Rea); Stephen Rea received the Theatre World Award. The show won the 1993 New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Foreign Play.

It was produced at the West End New Ambassador Theatre 16 April - 22 May 2005, where reviewer Peggy Nuttall wrote: "...the best thing I've seen in a long time." [1] Directed by Dominic Dromgoole, the play starred Jonny Lee Miller (Adam), Aidan Gillen (Edward) and David Threlfall (Michael).

Someone Who'll Watch Over Me was presented in January 2009 at the Carolina Actors Studio Theatre in Charlotte. More recently it was produced by the "Square Béal Theatre Company", showing in Virginia and Shercock, Co. Cavan during September and October 2010 and by Theatre by the Lake, Keswick, Cumbria from August to November 2011. [2] It was also put on at the Courtyard Theatre in London in July 2010 starring Tom Weston-Jones, Joe Jameson & Alasdair Buchan. [3]

In March 2013, on the 20th anniversary of the play's first staging in Ireland, Creaking Door Productions performed the play at The Viking Theatre and The New Theatre. Directed by Niall O'Higgins, the show starred Art Kearns (Edward), Danny Kehoe [ permanent dead link ] (Michael) and Conor Delaney (Adam). The show had a very successful run receiving 5 star reviews. (Someone-Who'll-Watch-Over-Me Review)

In May/June 2017 it was produced by the Irish Theatre Players in Perth, Western Australia. Directed by Andrew Baker, the show starred Paul Davey (Edward), Manuao TeAotonga (Adam) & Grant Malcolm (Michael). It was extremely well received, with many stating it was the best show the Irish Theatre Players had produced in decades. http://www.ita.org.au/2017/06/someone-wholl-watch-over-me/

Related Research Articles

Michael Gambon Irish-English actor

Sir Michael John Gambon is an Irish-English actor. Having trained under Laurence Olivier, he started his career on stage at the Royal National Theatre, and went on to receive a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Play for his work in David Hare's Skylight on Broadway.

Stephen Rea Irish actor

Stephen Rea is an Irish film and stage actor. Rea has appeared in films such as V for Vendetta, Michael Collins, Interview with the Vampire and Breakfast on Pluto. Rea was nominated for an Academy Award for his lead performance as Fergus in the 1992 film The Crying Game. He has during later years had important roles in the Hugo Blick TV series The Shadow Line and The Honourable Woman, for which he won a BAFTA Award. In 2020, he was listed at number 13 on The Irish Times list of Ireland's greatest film actors.

Jonathan Miller British theatre director

Sir Jonathan Wolfe Miller CBE was an English theatre and opera director, actor, author, television presenter, humourist and physician. After training in medicine and specialising in neurology in the late 1950s, he came to prominence in the early 1960s in the comedy revue Beyond the Fringe with Peter Cook, Dudley Moore and Alan Bennett.

<i>Guys and Dolls</i> Musical

Guys and Dolls is a musical with music and lyrics by Frank Loesser and book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows. It is based on "The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown" (1933) and "Blood Pressure", which are two short stories by Damon Runyon, and also borrows characters and plot elements from other Runyon stories, such as "Pick the Winner".

Professor Frank McGuinness is an Irish writer. As well as his own plays, which include The Factory Girls, Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme, Someone Who'll Watch Over Me and Dolly West's Kitchen, he is recognised for a "strong record of adapting literary classics, having translated the plays of Racine, Sophocles, Ibsen, Garcia Lorca, and Strindberg to critical acclaim". He has also published four collections of poetry, and two novels. McGuinness has been Professor of Creative Writing at University College Dublin (UCD) since 2007.

<i>Jerry Springer: The Opera</i>

Jerry Springer: The Opera is a British musical written by Richard Thomas and Stewart Lee, based on the talk show Jerry Springer. It contains irreverent treatment of Christian themes, extensive profanity, and surreal images, such as a troupe of tap-dancing Ku Klux Klan members.

Toby Stephens British actor

Toby Stephens is an English stage, television, radio and film actor who has appeared in films in both the UK and US as well as in India. He is known for the roles of Bond villain Gustav Graves in the 2002 James Bond film Die Another Day, Edward Fairfax Rochester in a BBC television adaptation of Jane Eyre and in his role as Captain Flint in the Starz television series Black Sails. Stephens is a lead in the Netflix science fiction series Lost in Space, which began streaming in 2018.

<i>The Last Five Years</i> 2001 musical

The Last Five Years is a musical written by Jason Robert Brown. It premiered at Chicago's Northlight Theatre in 2001 and was then produced Off-Broadway in March 2002. Since then it has had numerous productions both in the United States and internationally.

John Logan (writer) American film producer and screenwriter

John David Logan is an American playwright, screenwriter, film producer, and television producer. He is a three-time Academy Award nominee; twice for Best Original Screenplay for Gladiator (2000) and The Aviator (2004) and once for Best Adapted Screenplay for Hugo (2011).

Carey Mulligan British actress

Carey Hannah Mulligan is an English actress. She is the recipient of numerous awards and nominations, including a British Academy Film Award, a Critics' Choice Award and nominations for two Academy Awards, four Screen Actors Guild Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and a Tony Award.

Billy Roche is an Irish playwright and actor. He was born and still lives in Wexford and most of his writings are based there. Originally a singer with The Roach Band, he turned to writing in the 1980s. He has written a number of plays, including The Wexford Trilogy. He has also written screenplay of Trojan Eddie and published a novel, Tumbling Down, and a book of short stories.

Nick Moran British actor, writer, producer and director

Nick Moran is an English actor and filmmaker, best known for his role as Eddie the card shark in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. He appeared as Scabior in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 and Part 2.

Melissa Errico is an American actress, singer, recording artist and writer. She is known for her Broadway musical roles such as Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady, and Kurt Weill's One Touch of Venus, as well as her recordings of musical theater classics, including albums of songs by Stephen Sondheim and Michel Legrand. In recent years she has also become a contributing writer to The New York Times.

John Crowley (director) Irish film and theatre director

John Crowley is an Irish film and theatre director. He is best known for the films Brooklyn (2015) and his debut feature, Intermission (2003), for which he won an Irish Film and Television Award for Best Director. He is a brother of the designer Bob Crowley.

Stephen Adly Guirgis is an American playwright, screenwriter, director, and actor. He is a member and a former co-artistic director of New York City's LAByrinth Theater Company. His plays have been produced both Off-Broadway and on Broadway as well as in the UK. His play Between Riverside and Crazy won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Ayden Callaghan British actor

Joseph Patrick Callaghan, known professionally as Ayden Callaghan, is an English actor of stage and screen. He is best known for his roles as Miles De Souza in the soap opera Emmerdale from 2007 to 2008 and as Joe Roscoe in the soap opera Hollyoaks from 2013 to 2016.

Jake Hendriks is an English television actor. He is known for portraying Kieron Hobbs in the soap opera Hollyoaks and numerous stage roles.

Peter Caulfield is an English actor.

Robin Lefevre is a British theatre director. He has worked in Britain, Ireland, Australia, and the United States.

Landmark Productions is a theatre production company in Dublin, Ireland. Established in 2003 by Anne Clarke, Landmark produces plays in Ireland and tours Irish work abroad. The company has an association with a number of Irish writers including Enda Walsh and Paul Howard, the creator of Ross O’Carroll-Kelly. Recent award-winning productions include Enda Walsh’s Ballyturk and Arlington, Conall Morrison’s Woyzeck in Winter and the Donnacha Dennehy/Enda Walsh operas The Last Hotel and The Second Violinist.

References

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.