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...

Brendan entertained with words … the sort of words that always kept his audience hungry … and kept them wondering just what would come next. 'He wrote,' said the poet Louis MacNeice, 'with plenty of hyperbole and emphasis. He was a man of humanity, gusto and formidable wit.' Formidable indeed. His totally disordered life consumed a measure of porter that should not obscure the fact that he was one of the great Irish wits—comparable indeed with Wilde or Shaw. ...