Perth Voice Interactive

THE events of the Easter Rising in 1916 still resonate strongly with Perth’s Irish community. On this year’s Easter long weekend hundreds marched through Perth streets in commemoration of the rebels and civilians killed by indiscriminate fire as British forces quashed the insurrection.

The march also commemorated the 16 men executed for their leadership roles in the rebellion.

Ironically, it was the brutal British response to the rebellion that shifted wider public sentiment from apathy to support for the republican cause and the war of independence in 1920.

The Rising happened deep in the midst of the Great War, with republicans urging Ireland’s young men to fight for a free Ireland instead of dying in the British Empire’s far-off battles.

More than 200,000 Irishmen — many considering themselves loyal subjects of the British Crown — sailed off to fight in places like Belgium and Serbia.

To mark the 100th year of the Easter Rising the Abandon Theatre Players are performing the Tom Murphy play The Patriot Game, their first-ever production at the state theatre.

Director Ivan Motherway says back in Ireland there’s contention about how to mark the centenary, with wariness around lionising leaders whose actions led to so much death by way of the British retaliation: “There’s a debate over whether it should be celebrated at all,” Motherway says.

But Murphy’s script isn’t written to blindly glorify the leaders: much of the dialogue is drawn from what they were recorded down as saying at the time, and the Narrator character breaks the fourth wall to talk to the audience, commentating on how the Irish public felt towards the rebels.

“The Patriot Game is the only play I have found that deals with the Rising in the most factual way possible for fiction.”

Motherway says in previous productions this has proved provocative: Some people want a black and white tale where the brave Irish rebels can do no wrong, and an old timer came up to him after one performance, upset that the Narrator had criticised his “heroes”.

But the Narrator represents the views of the time, and many Irish were furious with the rebels: their fathers, sons and brothers were fighting and the rebels were bringing down a terrible wrath from the British.

Following the rebels’ surrender, 15 leaders were shot in quick succession — they’d been tried and convicted by military court with no defence —  and another was hanged.

“There was not widespread support,” before the rebellion, Motherway says, but “by executing them, they made them martyrs”.

He says the play is “for Irish, a new way of looking at an entrenched mythology. For Australians, it illuminates a major event in Irish history.”

The Patriot Game runs at the State Theatre Centre April 27 to May 1. Ticketek.com.au

by DAVID BELL