BORDERLINE CASE

Policemen from both sides of the political divide seek out some common ground in award-winning play

AN award-winning and highly charged play about the experiences of a garda officer and an RUC officer patrolling the border at the height of the Troubles will be performed in the London Irish Centre, Camden on May 19 and 20.

Green & Blue, produced by leading radical Belfast theatre company Kabosh, is being staged in the Centre as part of an extended run, which will also see it performed in the Project Arts Centre in Dublin.

The play, written by former IRA hunger striker turned writer Laurence McKeown, features two of Ireland’s finest actors, James Doran and Vincent Higgins, reprising their roles from the original production, which premiered at the 2016 Belfast International Arts Festival.

The play is based on real life interviews with police officers and has been shown with great acclaim to audiences of gardaí and former RUC officers and their families, as well as residencies in Prague, Brussels, Dresden and Paris, nd won the award for best theatrical moment at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. It is set in 1994, months before the IRA ceasefire, the year Kabosh began telling stories about society in the north. At the time, the British government were in secret peace talks with Irish republicans, while John Hume was in discussions with Gerry Adams.

Artistic director Paula McFetridge says Green and Blue is as relevant as ever, particularly as the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement once again turns the spotlight on the North of Ireland.

“The play depicts the time of army watchtowers, vehicle checkpoints, ‘Sniper at Work’ road signs and Wessex helicopters ferrying troops into the border areas. The apparatus of civil conflict has been dismantled but the six counties still remain a place apart.

“At Kabosh we aim to use high quality art to explore the causes and aftermath of conflict to promote understanding between the people of this island and to share these stories with audiences across the globe. All of our work is socially engaged. We prioritise giving voices to unheard narratives and marginalised communities, and have recently presented work focusing on modern slavery, human rights, domestic abuse, homelessness, and violence against women in conflict.”

In Green & Blue, James Doran plays garda officer Eddie O’Halloran, while Vincent Higgins is David McCabe, an RUC officer whose experience of patrolling the border is vastly different from his southern counterpart.

The pair recount their experiences, taking in the history of the conflict in Ireland, how they joined their respective organisations and the day-to-day life of working in a disputed territory. The play is laced with humour, insight and lots of touching moments between the two men.

Despite their different backgrounds, Eddie and David strike up a common bond and begin to learn more about themselves, their similarities as well as their differences. David’s experiences are harrowing, steeped in violence and the threat of violence, while Eddie’s are much more ordinary except for his occasional run-ins with the local IRA commander.

But there is a brooding sense of how what happens on one side of the border affects the other side. The two areas share a mutual dependence. With that air of comradeship felt by two people doing the same job, the pair decide to meet in a farmer’s field straddling the border and find out that the ‘grass is no greener’ on the other side of this invisible divide.

“Every line of the play is loaded, each scene redolent of the overall tragedy of Irish history and its wasted lives. These two ordinary men represent all of us and our place in a divided land. It allows us to glimpse the human beings behind the uniform. It eloquently explores the human cost of man-made borders,” Paula McFetridge said.

It was inspired by Diversity Challenges’ ‘Voices from the Vault’: oral histories from former Royal Ulster

Constabulary (RUC) and An Garda Síochána officers recalling their experiences as police officers during the Irish conflict.

 Green & Blue, London Irish Centre, Camden, May 19 and 20.