Entertainment

Review: Superb Agreement highlights how, 25 years on, hope and action at Stormont are now in short supply

As the Good Friday Agreement heads towards its 25th anniversary, John Hume (played by Dan Gordon) and David Trimble (Patrick O’Kane) talk it out in Owen McCafferty’s masterful play Agreement at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast
As the Good Friday Agreement heads towards its 25th anniversary, John Hume (played by Dan Gordon) and David Trimble (Patrick O’Kane) talk it out in Owen McCafferty’s masterful play Agreement at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast As the Good Friday Agreement heads towards its 25th anniversary, John Hume (played by Dan Gordon) and David Trimble (Patrick O’Kane) talk it out in Owen McCafferty’s masterful play Agreement at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast

Review

Agreement

The Lyric Theatre

Until April 22

Owen McCafferty's new play, Agreement, gives a superb account, 25 years on, of how the Good Friday Agreement came to be.

We all remember where we were when it was announced via BBC News. For me, it was a Canterbury sitting room with my Northern Irish boyfriend and my mother, nee Riley, and we were thrilled.

Cue the serious detail of how difficult the process was. We see Senator George Mitchell (Richard Croxford), emollient, statesmanlike, and key players onstage, moving desks as different figures become prominent.

It's a political chess game, superbly directed by Charlotte Westenra. The serious stuff works well as McCafferty channels the potentially dry and legal details – Strand One and Two etc – via character.

So we got the two sides of the divide, with David Trimble (Patrick O'Kane) the guy with unionist scruples who makes the biggest journey. He was tortured, clever, suffered from back pain and was an equivalent pain in the neck at times for the process of the agreement itself. His swearing, and the play is realistically potty-mouthed, was shocking.

Real life history is an interesting dramatic genre. David Hare wrote Stuff Happens about the Iraq War, others have covered contemporary topics such as the Grenfell Tower tragedy.

Talking to Owen McCafferty after the show, he pointed out that the participants in this vital, super-dramatic continuation of England and Ireland's tricky relationship didn't actually deliver the dialogue he gives them. They may not have said exactly this but undoubtedly something equivalent. It's authentic.

Tony Blair (brilliant Rufus Wright) is a star, also at times a comic turn. He swears a lot, theatrically, and is elevated on the shoulders of his co-players in a mosh pit moment that indicates Mr Blair's pop star status which may well have helped the GFA happen.

He wanted legacy, but also knew the importance of peace in our time. Apparently Wright and the other known Blair interpreter, Michael Sheen, are mates and have an ongoing competition as to who plays Tony best. My money's on Wright.

More seriously – yet this is all serious and the stakes are so high – is the way the good end game pans out. Hume is a sane voice, determined to try to see it through, and Dan Gordon conveyed humanity.

Sinn Féin, with IRA connections, are alongside the unionists part of the problem. Packy Lee played a peaky blinder as Gerry Adams, torn between representing his green constituency and making history. His encounter with the secretary of state Ms Mowlam were revealing.

Mo Mowlam, the only woman in the fray, is of course crucial. Andrea Irvine, while great on detail – shoeless, removing her wig worn after cancer treatment – isn't nearly coarse enough.

We know how it ends, but you almost felt you didn't as the drama is so good. Eoin Robinson created a visionary version of the pathetic fallacy, we guessed via the weather snapshot in an oval projection how things were going.

The audience held its breath and laughed around me. It is sad that hope and action at Stormont are now in short supply. Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed wove in and out as a tough mantra. The same applies now, I guess.

Michael Longley, whose seminal poem Ceasefire is reprinted in the programme, was in the audience. Agreement is an important production from the clever Lyric Theatre. See it if you can.

Agreement runs at the Lyric Theatre (028 9038 1081, lyrictheatre.co.uk) until April 22