Although Brendan Behan was the major new voice of Irish drama in the 1950s, for most of his contemporaries, his life was better known than his work. This situation was probably inevitable after he received international fame--and notoriety--in the wake...

Brendan Behan was the most important new Irish dramatist of the 1950s. Writing without the support of the theatrical establishment (the Abbey Theatre rejected his early efforts), Behan developed an original style that combined bawdy humor, genuine...

John Brannigan, Brendan Behan: Cultural Nationalism and the Revisionist Writer. Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2002. 187 pages. EUR 38.07 (hardback). John Brannigan is a cultural historian whose central argument is that Behan's reputation has suffered from a conventional tendency to see him...

Michael O'Sullivan. Roberts Rinehart, $28 (354p) ISBN 1-57098-274-0 O'Sullivan, literary editor of the Irish political magazine Magill, has done a wonderful job of tying together the strings of Behan's short, tumultuous life. Born into a staunchly Republican family (his uncle wrote the...

A few afterthoughts on the perfect revival of David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross, directed by Joe Mantello, at the newly named Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre on 45th Street:If there were a Tony Award for best ensemble acting, Glengarry's all-male troupe would surely win it hands...

There are artists whose public performance is so flamboyant … that their contemporaries, repelled or dazzled by the man, have failed to measure his artistic quality. This has been the fate of Brendan Behan…. That Behan's writings have some virtue is allowed—but of what kind is it? For in all assessments I have read of writing in English in the past decade, while significance is bestowed on many a dullard whose productions are deemed, by the critical investigator, to conform to th...

An Giall [is] the restrained and almost forgotten tragi-comedy in Irish by Behan on which The Hostage is based…. An Giall (The Hostage) had its première in … Dublin. At the end of a successful run, [Joan] Littlewood offered to stage the play in London if Behan would translate it into English. Behan accepted the offer and The Hostage was presented to the English-speaking world…. However, a comparison of the Irish and English texts reveals that The Hostage is not a translation; it ...

Brendan Behan's The Hostage is a frenetic play, difficult to sum up and easy to distort…. There is about it an effortless air of madcap fun, which at first reading is rather deceptive. Because of the frolicking atmosphere of jigs and reels, set in the midst of apparently unconnected scenes, the play appears to be a kind of light variety show or vaudeville. However, the riotous nature of the work has obscured its underlying seriousness…. Behan, rather than reinforce Irish devotion to Ire...