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Preview: Freedom of the City

Only go to see this play if you’re in a happy mood. It’s grim, it’s depressing, but it’s also bril­liant. Brian Friel wrote The Freedom of the City back in the seventies, around the time of Bloody Sunday, though the piece is not strictly based on the events of that day. The action takes place in two separate arenas. One is a room in the Guildhall in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, where three protestors from a non-violent march have accidentally found themselves. The other is a courtroom, where the gory events that later unfold in the town are in­vestigated, not, perhaps, with the ut­most rigour or accuracy.

The scenes are interwoven. You skip from courtroom to Guildhall and back again. And each time you do, the three innocents holed up in that room will pull harder and hard­er at your heart. It is grim. Freedom is one of Friel’s least per­formed works, and also one of his most overtly political. But there is humour to it too, which makes the politics more digestible, and the darker moments all the more dark. The main characters are the wom­an and the two men who end up in the Guildhall. They are all excellent actors. Their accents are flawless (which does mean you might strug­gle to understand every word) and the energy on stage between them is almost tangible.

Andrew Wynn-Owen, as Skinner, was especially superb. His emotional intensity was electrifying and he oozed a depth of character from his every pore. I sat within a yard of him perform; I was almost in pain from the intensity of it all. But that is not to do down the oth­er performances I saw. Both Niamh Furey, playing Lily, and Dominic Ballard, as Michael, were top-notch. There were a couple of hesitations, but I’m in no doubt they’ll have been ironed out long before the opening night.

Just in case great acting and grue­some writing weren’t enough, the staging should be interesting too. Freedom is being performed in the Morris Room of the Oxford Union, a space little used by student drama, but it is both intimate – almost claus­trophobically so – and grand (Wil­liam Morris did the wallpaper). Lily Levinson, one of the directors, ruminated to me about whether this play is so little performed because the yawning size of a professional theatre would be unable to do it jus­tice. The Morris Room might be one of the few places in England that can provide the perfect backdrop to this play.

Are you still unconvinced? The Freedom of the City is a terrifying play, and its run in the Union is set to be expertly done. Plus, there’s going to be some authentic Irish music and the lighting looks promising too. Just go and see it.

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