TOM TITUS -- Theater Review

To say that Brendan Behan’s “The Hostage” was ripe for a revival

locally would be something of an understatement. It was part of South

Coast Repertory’s first season in 1965 -- and hasn’t been seen in this

area since.

It’s not difficult to ascertain why. “The Hostage” is a rambling,

often confusing, and occasionally incoherent piece that demands a

particularly large cast. In its more lucid moments, however, it’s a

rollicking satire on the “troubles” in Ireland.

Orange Coast College has resurrected Behan’s epic play with music and

has achieved about as much as could be hoped from it, abetted by a

splendid and energetic ensemble of actors, singers and dancers. One of

the three colleens who perform Irish jigs (the program doesn’t specify

which) is exceptional.

Director Alex Golson has pulled this diverse collection together for

an entertaining, if not always enlightening evening. Strong individual

bits mesh into an increasingly cohesive whole, and the action often

transpires panoramically, and often simultaneously, across the extensive

staging area populated by 27 performers.

“The Hostage” is set in a Dublin boarding house/brothel, where the

various elbow-benders emulate the playwright himself in putting away the

pints. Presiding over the collection of residents, trollops,

cross-dressers and militants is Martin Winslow, turning in the finest

performance of the lot as Patrick, the gimpy legged, onetime Irish

Republican Army firebrand.

Winslow and Raine Hambley, as his sharp-tongued wife, have some of the

show’s more animated moments with their barbed exchanges.

The owner of the establishment, a bagpipe-playing, kilt-wearing man

who discovered his heritage late in life, is done with concentrated

blandness by Henry Wyatt Moore.

Among the tenants, superior performances are etched by Sean Gray and

Jessica Hutchinson as illicit lovers (she’s in the soul-saving business),

Shiloh Juilee Ashworth as a hooker and Malia Fee as a housekeeper fresh

from the convent who falls for the English prisoner who becomes the title

character. Hutchinson, in particular, displays a marvelously melodic

singing voice, in addition to strong comic talents.

The hostage, played with biting irony by D.J. Lapite, has been

captured by IRA goons Hugh Goodearl and Mark Vincent Hunt, to be executed

in reparation for the hanging of an IRA soldier in London.

This situation occupies the play’s second and third acts, between

bouts of elbow-bending (drinking) and bursting into song. Lending a bit

of bizarre atmosphere are female impersonators Michael Cavinder and James

Grant, Russian sailor Jeffrey Campbell (spending much of the show with

his trousers at half mast) and Shawn Shryer as the enthusiastic “lord of

the dance.”

The play’s a potpourri of Celtic craziness with a little music thrown

in here and there. As Golson admits in his program notes, “The Hostage”

is one play that is dying for an explanation.

Enjoying it for its innate craziness (think of an Irish “Laugh-in”)

and clinging to alternate elements of plot development probably are the

best ways to experience the production.

* TOM TITUS reviews local theater for the Daily Pilot. His reviews

appear Thursdays and Saturdays.

FYI

WHAT: “The Hostage”

WHERE: Orange Coast College Drama Lab Theater, 2701 Fairview Road, Costa Mesa

WHEN: Closing performances 8 tonight, 2 p.m. Sunday.

COST: $9

CALL: (714) 432-5880