Magpie – Viking Theatre – Review
by Frank L.

Written by Andrew Cusack
Starring Andrew Cusack, Johnjoe Irwin and Gavin Stewart

The set is bleak and sparse. It is a cell in Kilmainham Gaol during the Civil War. It consists of a black back wall on which has been scribbled “Ireland unfree shall never be at peace”.  There is some straw scattered around and a chamber pot.

As the audience enters the auditorium Michael (Andrew Cusack) is sitting on the floor of the cell with little more to do than pick his teeth. When the performance begins he chats with a magpie who comes and sits on a window high up in the cell which the audience cannot see. The magpie is however free to come and go and duly does.

Michael’s eldest brother Patrick (Johnjoe Irwin) by a cruel twist of fate is his gaoler. There were five brothers in the family and Michael is the youngest. Two died in childhood and Diarmuid died in the GPO fighting alongside Patrick. In the subsequent military round-ups throughout the city young Michael, sixteen years of age, found himself being dragooned into the British Army to fight in the trenches in France while Patrick was incarcerated in the self-same Kilmainham Gaol as a terrorist.

Michael’s experiences of horror in the trenches have scarred him and in nightmares, he revisits the obscenity of the carnage. When the Civil War broke out his treatment in the British army as Irish and his own ideals led him to the anti-Treaty side, while Patrick exhausted by the long years of violent struggle within Ireland led him to the pro-Treaty side. The play investigates how these two brothers with so much in common should as young men find themselves on opposite sides of such a violent political chasm.

Cusack is never off stage for the entire seventy minutes of the play. He has to encompass a gamut of emotions as he engages with his brother and gaoler Patrick but also to reveal his inner self as he has imaginary chats with the magpie who comes and goes to the window. Johnjoe Irwin is a more regular guy as Patrick and pragmatism is his guiding star … the treaty would bring the struggle to an end and he is able to rationalise the inevitable compromises notwithstanding he is a veteran of the GPO.

Into this fraught relationship, a priest (Gavin Stewart) visits Michael alone in his cell. Michael in a combative mood attacks the hypocrisy of the Church and makes great play of the disappearance of several named young women. The encounter does not go well and leads to an occurrence which is both surprising and shocking but is certainly memorable.

With the decade of centenaries in Ireland having come to an end in 2024, this play is timely as it shows the human cost to two brothers of those tumultuous years. The tragedy of these two brothers will have been played out in similar but different guises throughout Ireland. These tragedies leave their stain. That is the legacy which has to be handled.

This play tells a tale worth hearing for all those interested in the future of Ireland,. The scene with the priest while memorable for its drama distracts from the tragedy of these two brothers whose lives have been entirely upended by violence and the ensuing wars. It behoves all who live on this island to ensure that another decade of centenaries is not created wittingly or unwittingly. It is a thought-provoking play which is well worth seeing.