The Force of Change ( Archived )

Reviews

newspaper reviews

(L to R) Sean Caffrey as Bill, Jason Issacs as Mark, Stephen Kennedy as Stanley, Cathy White as Caroline

Production photography by Joe Dilworth

Direction: Robert Delamere, Design: Simon Higlett, Lighting: Chris Davey, Sound: Paul Arditti, Music: Harry Peat

Cast: Sean Caffrey, Stuart Graham, Jason Isaacs, Gerard Jordan, Stephen Kennedy, Cathy White

“Gary Mitchell has done it again. Only better. Last year, in Trust, he wrote a gripping play about the destructuve impact of the Northern Irish Protestant ethic on its own children. Now in this even more nail-biting work he shows how both policing and terrorism are dominated by a boys’ club atmosphere and by a series of interlocking collusions. His setting is an RUC station and two adjacent interview rooms. In one, Caroline, a married detective sergeant on a fast track to promotion, has five hours in which to nail down a UDA hard man: she is clearly not being helped by her side-kick, a resentful old sweat with 30 years in the force. Meanwhile two of her male colleagues are trying to break down a joyriding UDA messenger in the hope that he will implicate the terrorist next door. The two interrogations are inter-dependent; but when Caroline’s partner is briefly left alone with the suspect, it looks as if the whole edifice will fall apart.

“To reveal more would be to ruin a good story. But what Mitchell does is to show how the tribal politics of Northern Ireland create both resistance to change and a network of matching relationships. Reactionary males in the RUC close ranks against high-flying women like Caroline. The dominant male ethos even leads to a curious unspoken complicity between cop and criminal. And we are reminded that loyalist extremists and IRA hardliners are mirror-images of each other. What is most striking about Mitchell’s play, however, is the way it keeps subverting our moral certainties. It is not simply about a lone woman battling against a pervasive male ethos: at times the heroine’s interrogation-technique looks suspect. And, even though the play attacks the concept of tribal codes, Mitchell shows that the RUC’s protection of its own has positive as well as negative implications.”

Michael Billington THE GUARDIAN, 11 April 2000

“Should Patten prevail and the Royal Ulster Constabulary shed its name and insignia? After seeing Gary Mitchell’s Force of Change you’re unlikely to be decisively swayed either way, but you will have a far better sense of the confusions afflicting Northern Ireland’s embattled police. After all, the author is himself a young Ulster Protestant from a working-class background, and somehow combines the authority of an insider with the energy and skill of a born thriller-writer… As he shows in his two previous forays into the Ulster murk, Trust and In A Little World of Our Own, Mitchell has a Mamet-like knack for evoking atmosphere…. It is surely to Mitchell’s credit that, while not ducking the moral issues, he makes us acknowledge their complexity – and that he himself has the acknowledge that a man can be both a sexist bigot and a genuine battler against the evils of his own tribe. The ending … is yet more proof that Mitchell’s is not a safe nor politically correct voice. He has also written some cracking dialogue for Robert Delamere’s fine cast. Altogether, an instructive, entertaining addition to the Ulster files.”

Benedict Nightingale THE TIMES, 12 April

“Gary Mitchell is unlike any other Irish playwright. He’s a Protestant. He writes thriller plots. And his settings are always urban. He has always written with verve and edge; and now he has produced his best play to date, a high-voltage, disputatious examination of the Royal Ulster Constabulary. The Force of Change sets the Theatre Upstairs alight. Simon Higlett’s revealing design makes a traverse stage into a rat-run, with the audience banked on each side increasing the claustrophobia… Scrutinising a range of attitudes in the shape of four officers – one of them corrupt, one an embattled new recruit – he shows a force bewildered and threatened by the political changes engendered by the peace process. He lays bare both reactionary and honourable traits. Mitchell is a dramatist, not a debater: his ideas are embodied in the action of the play. And they are given brilliant embodiment under Robert Delamere’s direction. All the performances are first-rate … This is a new play which makes the new Royal Court Upstairs look explosive.”

Susannah Clapp THE OBSERVER, 16 April