Another Ireland

Gary Mitchell: his new play does not conform to any of the received versions of `Irishness' It's a classic domestic situation: the big man, the guardian of his community, the fixer of everybody's little local difficulties - except his own. Geordie McKnight is just such a person: leading light in the UDA, quietly spoken, rational, the guy you come to when you're in a bother. Be it vandalism or joy-riding or petty crime, Geordie will sort it out, no problem. Unless the victim happens to be his son.

Fifteen-year-old Jake McKnight is different. In spite of his father's worst efforts at persuading him to forsake homework for football, lemonade for beer, computer games for girls, Jake is sensitive, vulnerable, bright and, clearly, troubled. Only his mother Margaret understands and is prepared to take matters into her own hands.

The complex tangle of ties that bind this tight-knit loyalist family form the dark heart of Gary Mitchell's new play, Trust, which opened last week to a warm reception and full houses at the Royal Court's Theatre Upstairs, a venue known for providing a London platform for new Irish writing. But Trust, as Mitchell acknowledges, does not conform to any of the received versions of "Irishness", which West End audiences seem to be hooked on. "It's a difficult play for a London audience," he says. "It's not deliberately provocative, but no concessions have been made. It's just a play that I wrote for myself and for my community. It's challenging on a number of levels. And it's certainly a take on Ireland that British people may find hard to swallow. It deals in hard truths.

Some people are going to be very interested and involved. Others will find out things they didn't know and probably won't like. This is a community that does not think of itself as Irish; they are British. Yet many people in Britain don't recognise them as such. They just think of them as crazy people." Director Mick Gordon comes from Holywood, Co Down - on the opposite side of Belfast Lough from the loyalist Rathcoole estate where Mitchell and his family still live, yet, in his words, " . . . an entire planet removed" from it. Gordon is the artistic director of the Gate Theatre in Notting Hill and currently one of the hottest names in London theatre. Like Mitchell, he was adamant that the play should come off the page without a hint of explanation or exposition, that audiences should interpret it in their own way. "What is portrayed here is a very specific little world. It is completely different from the worlds portrayed by writers like Conor McPherson and Martin McDonagh. But Gary and I are delighted that Conor's play, The Weir, is running concurrently with Trust at the Royal Court. It opens the door to a live debate, through theatre, about what it means to inhabit different territories, different cultures on the island of Ireland. The two are culturally complementary."

With or without help from either writer or director, there was no doubting the positive response from the opening night audience, which laughed heartily at the black humour of the early scenes, then sat in spellbound silence as the thin veil of sanity around the McKnight household starts to come apart at the seams. When the applause finally subsided, many people emerged commenting that such a situation could equally arise in minority communities in Britain. But they then quickly observed that in Northern Ireland, these people come from the majority population - at which point, the focus hardens and sharpens. In his pacey, tensely dramatic production, Gordon has achieved a high level of credibility in the relationships within the family circle and between Geordie and his sidekick Artty. Gregg Fitzgerald makes his stage debut as poor, confused Jake, who finds his only refuge in the fiercely protective arms of his mother Margaret (Laine Megaw). Designer Rae Smith has paid attention to every detail of the neat-as-a-pin, perfectly decorated McKnight home. She visited Mitchell's parents' house in the course of her research and greatly amused the writer with the visible results of her trip to Rathcoole.

Alongside the domestic drama, a parallel storyline follows the risky exploits of a British soldier (Barnaby Kay), who, with his girlfriend Julie (Lorraine Pilkington), is attempting to do an arms deal with the loyalists and escape into the sunset. Though well structured and performed, it is something of a distraction from the character-driven central thread, which somewhere along the line turns into a nail-biting thriller. Its power is generated by three terrifyingly authentic performances from Patrick O'Kane as Geordie, Colum Convey as Artty and Ruairi Conaghan as dim-witted Trevor, a recently-released lifer, on the look-out for "employment". Little does he realise that times have changed since he's been inside, and it is left to Margaret, despairing at her husband's inactivity, to put into his irresponsible, idle hands the task of sorting out Jake's troubles. The wider, universal implications of the play were seized on by Royal Shakespeare Company literary manager Simon Reade. "It's a play about things that we don't want to see; the dark side of ourselves," he said. "The Irish plays we see in London are usually about the conflict between Catholics and the British.

This is about a world that is imploding on itself. I think it's important that it is opening here at the Royal Court." Mitchell spent most of last year as playwright in residence at the Royal National Theatre, which commissioned this play. "Being in London for a year was incredible," he says. "It's another world and opens up so many areas of your mind. People's opinions are shocking when you hear them voiced directly. It is much easier for an Englishman to deny being British than for an Ulster Protestant to deny being Irish. We suffer from being a community where everyone is telling us what we are. Why can't we all be allowed to be what we want to be? "We are so wrapped up in our own situation that we live within ourselves. We have nothing with which to compare our aspirations. We have notions in Ulster that no-one else in the world has. I've discovered that if you stand in the street in London for 10 minutes and say you want to be British, 100 people will ask you why. It certainly helps you get a new perspective."

Outside in the street, a regular London theatre-goer from New York voiced the opinion that this was "an interesting new voice and a very powerful play. I'm not sure that I understood all its implications and there was nothing I liked about the characters. But I think it is important that we hear as many voices as possible coming out of Ireland in these difficult times."