Brendan Behan set his debut play in Dublin's notorious Mountjoy Prison, and researched it thoroughly by spending four years there as an inmate in the 1940s. Yet for all the work's garrulous authenticity, the demands of the enormous cast make it a difficult play to revisit. For this 50th anniversary production, Oxford Stage Company makes an enlightened choice in handing the challenge to Kathy Burke.
The Quare Fellow is a roistering, boisterous, boys-only play that seems to have less need of a director than a strong-willed woman prepared to step in and tame it. Behan's most adept champion and interpreter was Joan Littlewood, whose natural successor Burke could well turn out to be.
Burke is admirably unfazed by the abrupt shifts between scripted mayhem and mordant introspection, and encourages some excellent performances along the way. Sean Campion's cadaverous Warder Regan gives a chilling account of paying witness to an execution; Jay Simpson's Hangman delivers a morbid seminar on the physics of calculating an accurate drop; and Ciaran McIntyre's Dunlavin is a roguish old soak who takes surreptitious swigs of the liniment the prison doctor applies to his legs. He also gets to deliver the best pun in the show: "There's only one type of tobacco allowed in here: Three Nuns. Nun today, nun tomorrow and nun the day after."
But for all its hubbub, The Quare Fellow is a play about camaraderie rather than character, and Burke's cast work commendably hard to keep the voices distinct and the personalities clear. Proof, if it were needed, that Burke is more than capable of handling 17 blokes at once.
· Until tomorrow. Box office: 0161-624 2829. Then touring.
