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 Nicole Lohfink ROSE OF LIMA, bawd Ricarda Wagner CRONIN, blind man Stefan Enderle HERO HOGAN, blind man Joachim Schlosser BONNIE PRINCE CHARLIE Jan Ostmeyer MRS CRONIN Sandra Anzer MRS MALLARKEY Linda Elias DEIRDRE MALLARKEY Barbara Braun A CORPSE Flora Herberich BLUESHIRTS UNDERTAKER'S MEN AND OTHERS Sandra Anzer Sandra Anzer Barbara Braun Linda Elias Flora Herberich Jan Ostmeyer Susanne Rinecker Joachim Schlosser MUSICIAN Alexander Eggstein poster Alexander Eggstein, Nicole Lohfink, Joachim Schlosser programme Dieter Ungelehrt prompt Isabella Nowrot speech training Karen Conboy-Wiedemann make-up and hairstyling Nicole Lohfink, Ricarda Wagner costumes and props the crew stage and set Alexander Eggstein, Sandra Anzer lighting and sound an unknown technician stage manager Karen Conboy-Wiedemann musical director Linda Elias directed and produced by Dieter Ungelehrt

Was die Presse sagte Augsburger Allgemeine, Dienstag, 6.5.1997 Groteske zwischen Grabsteinen KiDS zeigt "Richards Cork Leg" im abraxas 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 (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.