While plays such as The Chronicles of Long Kesh have documented the recruitment path of the IRA, imaginatively, not much attention has been paid to the men and women in the steel Land Rovers, members of the RUC. Until now, as Bright Umbrella’s new drama, Stuck in the Middle with You, by Sam Robinson and Trevor Gill takes us on a journey of discovery via five peelers. Norman, Winston, Martin aka Four Bellies, Ciaran and Gayle are positioned on the interface where Sanctuary Theatre itself is set in Castlereagh Street. There’s a riot on, it’s the 1990s and the reality of life on the front line is not sanitised after a blast of Joni Mitchell. We learn of the way the police are targeted, of escapes from hit jobs, of bodies found without their faces. Sitting in the “steel coffin”, our defenders have to deal with it all.
There’s gunshot in the mix and we think Four Bellies has died. But no, his tomato sauce and collapse have led to a tragi-comic mistake. Officer in charge Norman is furious, everyone else relieved and amused. The trademark Northern Irish black humour leavens the intensity of the drama.
And it is intense with the Catholic RUC man recognising and nearly flooring Winston, who allowed his family’s Clonard Street house to be trashed and desecrated by soldiers back in the day. There are great lines and Winston (great tough man Wilson McDowell) dismisses Ciaran’s account as very “In the Name of the Father”. Norman, brilliantly played by Richard Clements, breaks down mid play as he recalls seeing the son of family friends, Paul, plant a bomb underneath his car. With a hideous irony, his mother had provided enough information to put the young guy on the right trail to find him.
A lot of ground is covered, maybe slightly too much with informers, debates on the Good Friday Agreement, the transition to the PSNI and football dads in edgy chat about “real Loyalism”. Context is provided by a framing device, namely a fictional English journalist Paula Davey whose book on the RUC has won an award. Real Kate Adie (persuasive Cchristine Clark) also pops up, reporting in the riot and endangering the RUC protectors. It all has the tang and bite of real life.
There are touching passages and Four Bellies’ account of seeing a kingfisher, his father’s favourite bird, which saved him from suicide after he’d embarrassed himself in his reaction to a bad scene is memorable in J Davey’s hands.
The denouement, after Gerry Rafferty’s eponymous song is played, is grim. All five characters die in different incidents. Shot down, gunned down on a doorstep for representing the Crown, finally fingered by the opposition, and in Norman’s case, his suicide movingly described. He removes his shoes, walks into the sea and keeps walking. It’s a thought-provoking piece of theatre directed by Trevor gill.
Jane Hardy