Auditions for The Hostage’ by Brendan Behan

If you would like to audition for ‘The Hostage’ by Brendan Behan we will be holding auditions for ‘The Hostage’ by Brendan Behan on the 12th & 14th November with the show running from February 20th until March 8th 2025

‘The Hostage’ is set in Dublin City and portrays the circumstances leading up to a planned execution of an IRA member in a Belfast jail. 

We will be holding auditions on the 12th & 14th Nov at The Emerald Isle Seniors Centre in the evening. 

If you are interested in acting in the next play please email [email protected] for an audition time slot. 

Character list:

 [PAT] Male. Ex-hero and current brothel keeper with his spouse Meg. Irish nationalist. Injured his leg during his service and was imprisoned by the British. Heavy on the drink, Pat is the caretaker of the brothel and lodging house and an old comrade of Monsewer’s. He is a tough, sardonic middle-aged ‘‘ex-hero’’ who fought in the Easter Uprising and the Irish Civil War. Pat initially presents himself as being unmoved by Meg’s passionate proclamation that ‘‘the old cause is never dead,’’ but it soon becomes clear that he too nurses a sentimental longing for the old days of the Easter Uprising. Pat is contemptuous of the New IRA, believing them to be bureaucratic and humorless. Pat also operates as the organizer of much of the action: pushing characters off stage or calling them on. He retains a genuine affection and respect for Monsewer, who was his leader in the earlier independence movement. His cynical detachment lets him recognize and regret the danger the hostage is in without compelling him to do much to avert that danger. He believes in enjoying whatever pleasures are available, as a way of merely getting through life.

[MEG DILLON] Female. Pat’s consort, the real managing power behind the boardinghouse. Foul-mouthed and irreverent, she makes few moral judgments as long as the boarders pay the rent. She shares his sardonic sense of humor and dislike of hypocrisy and is particularly critical of Miss Gilchrist’s pious twittering. Meg is a romantic Irish nationalist and something of a sentimentalist: she sighs for the Irish fighting spirit of by-gone years and mourns for the Belfast prisoner. But she is also quick to point out the problem in Pat’s pride in the past and his contempt for the present generation: to her, there is no difference between the two periods of fighting.

[MONSEWER] Male. The owner of the house and Pat’s former IRA commander. British by birth, he adopted his Irish mother’s nationality, learned Gaelic at university, and fought for Irish independence. Now comically senile, he is unaware of the real nature of the boardinghouse and imagines that it is a safe house for current IRA fugitives, whom he does not distinguish from freedom fighters of the 1920’s. He is fond of parading on-stage, playing his bagpipes and ordering the brothel inhabitants to form a marching line.

[COLETTE] Female, Colette is a younger prostitute who works in the brothel. Early in the play she complains about taking a communist as a customer.

[PRINCESS GRACE] Male, Princess Grace is a black sailor who is Rio Rita’s boyfriend. At the play’s end, he colludes with his boyfriend and Mulleady and betrays Pat and Monsewer.

 [RIO RITA] Male, Rio Rita is a homosexual navy man. Flamboyant and witty, he spends much of his time on stage flirting with his boyfriend, Princess Grace, or avoiding paying the rent he owes Pat. At the play’s end, Rio Rita joins forces with Mulleady and betrays Pat and Monsewer to the police.

[MR. MULLEADY] Male. Described in the play as a ‘‘decaying Civil Servant,’’ and as such he is part of the small group of lodging house inhabitants who think of themselves as ‘‘genteel’’ (part of the lower-middle class who aspire to the values and manners of the upper class). Mulleady carries on with an equally hypocritical partner, Miss Gilchrist, and the two of them band together in Act Two to sing songs that celebrate their pro-English and pro-monarchical values. However, at the play’s end, after he has informed upon Pat and Monsewer and invaded the house, he reveals himself to be a secret policeman.

[MISS GILCHRIST] Female. “Prim and Proper” Miss Gilchrist, a social worker full of pious platitudes. She has a tendency to confuse physical attraction with desire to save men’s souls. Not a regular inhabitant of the lodging house. An acquaintance of Mr. Mulleady’s, she appears with him after the two of them have been making ‘‘disgusting noises’’ in their room together for three hours. Miss Gilchrist masquerades as an evangelical, tract-carrying Christian, but she is apparently not pure enough to resist an occasional fall from grace. In Act Two she and Mr. Mulleady sing songs in celebration of King and Country, but her alliance with him is torn asunder when he takes up with Rio Rita and Princess Grace.

[LESLIE Williams] Male, 19, English soldier - the titular “Hostage”. Private in the British army, stationed in Armagh, Northern Ireland. Too young to vote, innocent of politics and history, and an orphan who does not even have a girlfriend, he is coming out of a pub when the IRA “captures” him, imprisons him in Pat’s boardinghouse, and threatens to kill him if the British execute a convicted IRA terrorist they are holding. Initially, he does not seem to take his situation seriously: sex, cigarettes, and a ‘‘nice cuppa tea’’ are his main interests. However, when he learns that the Belfast prisoner will not be reprieved, he realizes he stands a good chance of being shot in retribution, and his attitude darkens. He is shot at the end of the play.

 [TERESA] Female, 19. Pat and Meg’s maid servant. She comes from the country, where she was educated in a strict Catholic convent. She had just one other job before coming to Dublin but had to leave because ‘‘there was a clerical student in the house.’’ She is out of her league in the lodging house and brothel, but she demonstrates her good heart by comforting Leslie. Innocent of politics and history, and an orphan, she instinctively realizes that although she is Catholic and Leslie is Protestant, they have more in common with each other than either has with anyone else. The love with which they attempt to bridge the gap between factions is doomed by the selfishness and false pride of partisans on both sides of the issues.

[I.R.A. OFFICER] Male. The IRA Officer is a schoolmaster in his working hours and a tough man in his free time. His uptight bureaucratic attitude to the provisioning and securing of the hostage reflects his schoolmaster background. Behan describes him as a ‘‘thin-faced fanatic.’’ He shares with Miss Gilchrist a penchant for pious posturing. Pat dislikes his absolute humorlessness.

[Russian Sailor] Male. Colette’s customer, who is actually a police spy.
[Ropeen] Female. Ropeen is an older prostitute with pro-British sympathies who works
in the brothel.

[(IRA Feargus O’Connor) VOLUNTEER] Male. The inexperienced volunteer works as a ‘‘railway ticket-collector’’ to earn money and volunteers for the Cause when he can. His incompetency and soft-heartedness is a neat foil to his leader’s bureaucratic attitude and toughness, and he is utterly unable to stop people visiting Leslie.