Writer: Andrew Cusack
Director: Ronan Colfer
Following a run at the Old Red Lion Theatre in February, Andrew Cusack’s 60-minute play Magpie has returned to the venue as part of the Camden Fringe Festival 2024, and in a stifling hot auditorium, the pressure on Michael Murphy to confess to the murder of his friend Tommy matches the temperature in the room. A prison story investigating the opposing voices in the war for Irish independence, this 1923-set drama pits brother against brother as they determine which one of them is really a traitor.
Civil Wars divide families and Cusack’s play compares former soldier in the British army turned IRA gunman, Michael, and his sibling Patrick, a member of the Irish Free State Army who also happens to be prison guard to his brother locked up in Kilmainham Gaol awaiting his fate. With much of the play a duologue between the Murphys set across 13 days of Michael’s internment, Magpie continually blurs the lines between their shared memories and the quite different political beliefs they have developed in the present.
One of Cusack’s strongest lines of inquiry is the pointed link between Michael’s experience in the trenches of the First World War and his growing radicalisation, noting the extent to which his treatment by the British, as well as the enduring night traumas, have stoked his political ire and resulted in the assassination for which he is charged. There are greater depths to mine here and perhaps in place of some of the more repetitive filial conversations, Magpie could say more about the bigoted treatment that the younger Michael received in the British army and the impact of being sent into no man’s land to recover bodies after dark in a conflict like no other – experiences that clearly underpin the man he has become.
And although it may seem unlikely that Patrick would stand guard over his own brother alone, Cusack also draws out the complexity of the years leading up to Michael’s arrest for Ireland, the deep and equally harrowing experience of the Easter Rising in 1916 which includes the deaths of friends and family that shape Patrick’s views while his brother was in France. There is an evenhandedness in Cusack’s approach that tries to see both sides and the play shifts audience perceptions of both Michael and Patrick as new information is revealed.
More could be made of Michael’s response to being detained and the likely outcome of his imprisonment, reflecting more on his life and choices as the possibilities of freedom become increasingly remote. Although set in very different eras, plays like Jesus Hopped the A Train and several films with Montgomery Clift such as A Place in the Sun and I Confess could be useful reference points as condemned characters contemplate their lives as time runs out for them. This could deepen Michael’s experience and give greater value to the otherwise underwritten appearance of priest Father Deirmuid in the play.
With fine performances by Cusack as Michael and Johnjoe Irwin as Patrick, the singular sorrow-heralding magpie of the title certainly fulfils its emblematic duty in a play depicting a conflicted time in Ireland’s history but offers a good basis for further understanding the divisions and the different sides men chose to fight for.
Runs until 4 August 2024
Camden Fringe runs until 25 August 2024
