WE'RE all familiar with the old black and white photos of Long Kesh prisoners in the 1970s, arms around each others' shoulders, smiling at the camera. You can almost hear the sleggings and the banter. They could be holiday snaps from Donegal rather than a prison camp on the outskirts of Belfast. I suppose everybody smiles when the camera comes out.
I always thought those pictures didn’t do the men any favours on their release when they returned home to their wives. “Here was me struggling to put food on the table for four children and there’s you living it up in that holiday camp.”
As it turns out the wives and partners of political prisoners needn’t have worried. Terry George’s play The Tunnel paints an entirely different picture of what life in the Cages of Long Kesh was like. If Terry’s play is accurate then those photos were mere snapshots of normality when a smuggled camera was produced, because behind the gregarious smiles and comradeship a different reality emerges beyond the walls of the Nissen huts where the men were housed together: Tensions, claustrophobia, suspicion, fear, jealousy and one-upmanship are all laid bare.
The scene is set on arrival in The Lyric auditorium with a Nissen hut on stage sliced open like a can of beans on its side. Beds, tables and chairs are inside the familiar semi-circled bunkhouse with its corrugated roof; a hangover from WWII airfields. On the outside where we’re looking in, there is music from 1976: Hot Chocolate, The Eagles, 10CC. The songs and sounds that the prisoners had left behind.
Oscar winner George, a former political prisoner who served time in Long Kesh, originally wrote The Tunnel in 1986 where it was produced at the Irish Arts Center in New York. The Lyric production is the first time the play has been seen in nearly 40 years and is the first time it has been produced in Ireland.
BB, Harry, Seany, Barney and Joe in deep discussion 
It begins with the arrival of Joe (Oisín Thompson) into one of the huts. The nervous 19-year-old IRA man from Armagh comes under immediate scrutiny after having signed a confession during RUC interrogation. The hut's OC, Frank (Chris Corrigan) and his enforcer BB (Andy Doherty) were caught up in the maelstrom of the early 1970s and are now IRA veterans. Suspicious of Joe, they make it their business to keep an eye on him. Joe, on the other hand, is heartened that fellow Armagh man Sean Feeney (Martin McCann) is also in the hut. Joe rioted for three days when he was still at school when the local IRA folk hero was caught by the Brits. Three years on and Seany doesn’t feel much like a hero, separated from his wife and the child he hardly knows. Harry (Ciarán Nolan), who’s in for handling documents, and aul hand Barney (Vincent Higgins) make up the sentenced prisoners. Later we have the arrival of another young prisoner, Francis (Cillian Lenaghan).
OC Frank (Chris Morgan) and BB (Andy Doherty)
The men have a lot to be worried about. The constant suspicion of having an informer within their ranks. Fears of marital infidelities on the outside, and rumours of an end to Special Category Status and the introduction by the British government of the criminalisation policy, frame many discussions.
And yet the tension is relieved time and again with moments of humour, and laughter from the audience. Anticipating a Brit raiding party the men barricade themselves in their hut and crack open the poitín that they've been carefully distilling, which leads to the inevitable singsong; and then there is the Ouija board scene; and of course, the fart in the tunnel. In fact, the tension is relieved anytime Ciarán Nolan has a line to deliver.
The Ouija board scene
But that’s only temporary. It’s only an escape from the circumstances the men find themselves in. What they want is a permanent escape. Seany wants out. He needs to get out. He’s had enough of Frank’s military drilling when he can see the new prison being built out the window. A new prison with cells where, he says, they’ll put you away forever.
Ominously, the decision is made to start a tunnel that will take them beyond the wire fence before they can make their escape over the wall; a wall that is manned by armed British soldiers. They know that if the escape fails they could end up in those new cells.
When the end comes it was not what I expected; nor wanted.
Cleverly written and directed by Terry George, at one level we’re looking at the raw emotions and personal conflicts that comes from men living cheek by jowl. But it's much more than that because there is something that is difficult to shake off. With the benefit of hindsight we know what's coming down the track in that new prison that Seany so fears. In The Tunnel you're left with the distinct impression that the prisoners know the fate that awaits them too.
The Tunnel runs at The Lyric Theatre until August 16. You can book tickets here.
