Staging the Outcast in Brendan Behan’s Three Prison Dramas

Brendan Behan’s portraits of the Irish Republican Army and the working-class community brought many previously unseen characters to light, including prison inmates, prostitutes, homosexuals and so forth. However, the most notable aspect of Behan’s dramas is not necessarily the realistic approach by which most Irish playwrights have delineated social plights, but his meta-theatrical manner, alongside ensuing alienation effects, that keep audiences critically aware of a highly politicized and sectarian society. Behan consistently attempts to unsettle nationalist propaganda, gender biases and the puritanical narrative that the state/church apparatus had reinforced. His depictions of prisons that rarely receive public exposure challenge the binary perception of being either a martyr or a betrayer, a terrorist or a pacifist, and a moral or immoral being. Given that the young Behan had been jailed in both England and Ireland for supporting republican causes, he was able to offer a personal yet revisionist view of prisoners from different political persuasions and cultural backgrounds. The three prison dramas to be discussed are The Quare Fellow (1954), The Hostage (1958) and Borstal Boy (1967) – the final one being a posthumous adaptation of Behan’s novel. These plays map out an alternative viewpoint of Ireland from within and beyond political imprisonment, and last but not least, Behan’s theatrical legacy.