The Stage

The Big Fellah

Published Monday 27 September 2010 at 10:26 by Aleks Sierz

British theatre’s most provocative playwright, Richard Bean, teams up with veteran director Max Stafford-Clark in this thought-provoking play, a comic epic that spans three decades about American supporters of the IRA. Set in New York, it starts in the aftermath of Bloody Sunday in 1972 and shows how Costello, the Big Fella of the title, protects Ruairi, an IRA man on the run, and recruits Michael, a local man.

Stephanie Street (Karelma), Rory Keenan (Ruairi O'Drsceoil) and David Ricardo-Pearce (Michael Doyle) in The Big Fellah by Richard Bean at Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith Photo: Tristram Kenton

Michael’s Bronx apartment (designed by Tim Shortall) is a safe house, where money raised for the IRA is counted and armament shipments organised. Visitors include the hippy Karelma, the activist Elizabeth, the psycho Frank and local cop Tom Billy. As the years pass, it becomes obvious that the FBI have a spy in the New York cell, but who is it?

Bean’s play is very funny, full of sharp contrasts between grim hilarity and gut-wrenching reversals. The comparisons he makes between Irish terrorism and Muslim fanaticism are highly questionable, and his cell retains its support of violent Republicans despite the Peace Process. In the end, the final scene suggests that Republican supporters among the New York police and fire service deserved to perish in the 9/11 attack. Those that live by the sword die by the sword.

Stafford-Clark directs with clarity and truth, dwelling on Bean’s wonderfully eccentric characters, such as Fred Ridgeway’s Frank and Youssef Kerkour’s Tom Billy, but also allowing Finbar Lynch to squeeze the most sympathy out of the title role. As Ruairi and Michael, Rory Keenan and David Ricardo-Pearce are always convincing, while Stephanie Street and Claire Rafferty make the female roles perfectly believable. Whatever your misgivings about the play’s taste, its bitter humour and tense ending more than justify the production.