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About Brendan Behan
BEHAN, Brendan, 1923-64, Irish playwright. He was born in Dublin, a child of the
tenements. Behan credited his education to his prison terms, though he owed much to his family, well-read, and of strong Republican sympathies. At 14 he joined the
IRA, an spent two years in an English Borstal, convicted in 1939 of carrying
explosives. Released an deported, in 1942 he got 14 years for shooting at a policeman during an IRA ceremony.
Amnestied in 1947, Behan continued the writing begun in prison, mainly short stories in an inventive stylisation of Dublin
vernacular. His plays brought him celebrity. In 1954 the Pike Theatre presented The Quare Fellow, a grimly comic drama of the hours preceding a prison hanging. Much more than
propaganda against judicial execution, it captures, with remarkable economy of form and a neutrality of tone, the condition of the outcast and the emotions excited by barbaric
revenge. Joan Littlewood's 1956 Theatre Workshop production in London made Behan famous.
Success was unmanageable. Behan's irresolute discipline collapsed into prolonged drinking bouts. The Hostage (1958),
his next play, derived from his one-act Gaelic play An Giall, was acclaimed in London, Paris and New York. Much influenced by Joan Littlewood's improvisational theatre, its
travesties with song and dance - and Behan's easy conniviance - the tragic simplicity of its original. His last serious work, Borstal Boy (1958), is an imaginatively controlled account of his Borstal years, itself the testimony to a
sophisticated creative power and great generosity of feeling.
A clamorous Dublin presence, belligerent or convivial, Behan illuminated the theatrical darkness of the
1950s. He subdued his vivid personality to an objective form, and his work, however brief, is continuous with a tradition, that of O'Casey's urban drama.
The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English, ed. Ian Ousby, Cambridge, 1988
About Richard's Cork Leg
RICHARD'S CORK LEG, edited an completed by Alan Simpson (Produced Dublin and London, 1972).
The story concerns two prostitutes, Rose of Lima and Maria Concepta, who meet every year to say a
prayer and sing a hymn in a graveyard near Dublin, for Crystal Clear, a colleague who has been murdered in the Dublin mountains twenty years previously.
To the graveyard come two 'blind' men with collection boxes. These are the Hero Hogan and the 'Leper' Cronin, his
bodyguard. The Hero Hogan had fought in the Spanish Civil War on the Republican side and is coming to the graveyard to break up a meeting of Blueshirts, or Irish Fascists. (The
Blueshirts had gone to Spain to fight for Franco.) As in The Hostage, a farcical figure is introduced: Bonnie Prince Charlie,
a Negro 'Prince' who is in charge of the graveyard and who intends to turn it into another 'Forest Lawn' (An American
funeral home), with recordings of the dead, played for the mourners.
Another visitor to the graveyard is Mrs Mallarkey, Hogan's Irish-Belgian first cousin and a bigoted member
of the Protestant Plymouth Brethren. She has come to scatter the ashes of her dead brother, who had been killed in the Congo while massacring the natives there.
The plot is virtually non-existent. After a long discussion in the graveyard, Cronin seduces Mrs Mallarkey's daughter Deirdre,
Hogan shoots (at) a Blueshirt, and in the last section of the play, they all end up with the prostitutes in Mrs Mallarkey's house, singing 'Lady Chatterly's Lover' and having a good
time there until the 'garda' (Irish for 'police') arrive...
The character of Cronin is interesting, because it is obviously based on Brendan Behan himself, and Cronin
expresses many of Behan's own views of life. He is a disenchanted drop-out, who refuses to work an only
wants to be left alone. The Hero Hogan character is a satire an the 'hero figures' in recent Irish history –
members of the IRA, Irish volunteers in the Spanish Civil War and militant socialists.
RICHARD'S CORK LEG was the last piece of written work, Brendan Behan was to do. It was never fully
finished by the author, for after his work on it in May 1961, Brendan did no more writing.
Adapted from Brendan Behan, Ulick O'Connor, London
It's my old Irish tomb I'll be in there soon But first you mus kiss me Beneath the harvest moon No matter where you come from No matter where you be
Remember the old Irish graveyard And a stone marked R.I.P.
All texts in this program taken from: Paul Lawley on Contemporary Dramatists, 4th ed., London, 1988
The CAST
MARIA CONCEPTA, bawd
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Nicole Lohfink
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ROSE OF LIMA, bawd
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Ricarda Wagner
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CRONIN, blind man
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Stefan Enderle
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HERO HOGAN, blind man
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Joachim Schlosser
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BONNIE PRINCE CHARLIE
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Jan Ostmeyer
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MRS CRONIN
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Sandra Anzer
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MRS MALLARKEY
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Linda Elias
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DEIRDRE MALLARKEY
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Barbara Braun
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A CORPSE
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Flora Herberich
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BLUESHIRTS UNDERTAKER'S MEN AND OTHERS
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Sandra Anzer
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Sandra Anzer
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Barbara Braun
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Linda Elias
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Flora Herberich
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Jan Ostmeyer
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Susanne Rinecker
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Joachim Schlosser
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MUSICIAN
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Alexander Eggstein
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poster
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Alexander Eggstein, Nicole Lohfink, Joachim Schlosser
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programme
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Dieter Ungelehrt
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prompt
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Isabella Nowrot
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speech training
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Karen Conboy-Wiedemann
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make-up and hairstyling
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Nicole Lohfink, Ricarda Wagner
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costumes and props
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the crew
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stage and set
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Alexander Eggstein, Sandra Anzer
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lighting and sound
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an unknown technician
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stage manager
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Karen Conboy-Wiedemann
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musical director
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Linda Elias
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directed and produced by
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Dieter Ungelehrt
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Was die Presse sagte
Augsburger Allgemeine, Dienstag, 6.5.1997
Groteske zwischen Grabsteinen
KiDS zeigt "Richards Cork Leg" im abraxas
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Groteske Begegnung zwischen Grabsteinen. Zwei Prostituierte und zwei Blinde verbindet die Liebe zur irischen Heimat.
Von links: Ricarda Wagner, Joachim Schlosser, Stefan Enderle und Nicole Lohfink. Bild: Jutta Fiege
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(jufi). Schwärzester Humor, eine Schau irischer Schicksale, Groteske zwischen Grabsteinen
mit Gesang und Musik - das bot die jüngste Produktion der Königsbrunn Drama Society
(KiDS) ihren zahlreichen Zuschauern im Kulturhaus abraxas mit Brendan Behans "Richards
Cork Leg". Unter der Regie von Dieter Ungelehrt trumpfte das junge Ensemble mit hervorragendem Schauspiel und theatralischen Highlights auf.
Schon die Kulisse (Alexander Eggstein, Sandra Anzer) war fesselnd: stilistisch stimmige Grabsteine
eines irischen Friedhofes, inklusive einer offenen Gruft für die "Kelly Family". Wie ein Jack in the Box
wurde aus dem Sarg heraus gesungen, Asche aus der Urne verstreut, am Grab einer Prostituierten
gebetet. Irischen Existenzkampf zwischen Unterdrückung, Terrorismus, Angst, Kampf und Sterben
über Jahrhunderte zu einem eigentümlichen Way of Life pragmatisiert hat der Ire Behan - selber wegen
seiner IRA-Aktivitäten zu acht Jahren Haft verurteilt - in dieses szenische Spiel gepackt. Eine Art
Abrechnung mit der Benachteiligung seines Landes ist dabei herausgekommen, zugleich aber auch ein
Verwirrspiel zügelloser Emotionen von Libido bis Lethargie. Beeindruckend von KiDS in
Originalsprache mit den Songs der "Dubliner" auf die Bühne gebracht, hatte das Publikum atemlose Unterhaltung in den Wechselbädern des Lachens und Mitfühlens.
Skurrile Gesellschaft
Absolut überzeugend spielten Nicole Lohfink, Ricarda Wagner, Stefan Enderle, Joachim Schlosser,
Jan Ostmeyer, Sandra Anzer, Linda Elias, Barbara Braun, Flora Herberich mit musikalischer
Unterstützung von Alexander Eggstein die skurrile Gesellschaft von Nutten, Blinden, Kampfgenossen
und Patrioten, verbunden durch die Liebe zu Irland und Whisky. Reife Leistungen von KiDS wie diese
machen das ehemalige Schultheater des Gymnasium Königsbrunn mehr und mehr zu einem hochklassigen Kulturfaktor.
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