Agreement: Going crazy negotiating the Good Friday Agreement
Owen McCafferty’s first play in six years returns to a kaleidoscopic style. Things get weird.
Lyric Theatre, Belfast
★★☆☆☆
“Arguing is a national sport here,” says someone, early in the Lyric Theatre’s new play about the negotiations that led to the Good Friday Agreement. That pithy explanation is given to an oblivious politician arrived in Belfast, where embittered opposing parties have, after much toiling, been dragged to the table, with nothing less than peace on the line.
If the timeline of events remains obscure to all but the well-informed historical anorak, then Owen McCafferty’s playscript neatly disentangles the politics. Under the watch of U.S. Senator George Mitchell (Richard Croxford as a useful narrator), everyone is on deadline to agree to a new system of government, and try bring three decades of violence to a close. Talks can collapse at any moment; David Trimble, uptight and paranoid in Patrick O’Kane’s superb performance, threatens to walk away if the Republic’s constitutional claim to the six counties isn’t removed.