A very brief history of Northern Ireland's 'The Troubles'

Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom. It shares a border with the Republic of Ireland. Northern Ireland has for many years been the site for violent political conflicts, often called 'The Troubles' between those claiming to represent Nationalist's (predominantly the Catholics) and those claiming to represent the Unionist's (predominantly the protestants) ideals. In general, the Nationalists want Northern Ireland to be reunited with the Republic of Ireland.

This war for national liberation traces its roots to the original conquest of the island by Norman Britons in 1167 and to The Act of Union between Britain and Northern Ireland in 1800. 'The Troubles' still continue today with a terrorist war continuing to centre on bringing an end to British occupation of Northern Ireland.

The INLA (Irish National Liberation Army) is a radical terrorist group dedicated to British removal and unifying Ireland. The INLA formed as a splinter group of the IRA (Irish Republican Army) in 1974 and their activities have included bombings, assassinations, kidnappings, extortion and robberies. The INLA essentially tore itself apart in 1987, due to internal feuding, but the root of the problems seemed to be the INLA's lax recruiting methods as well as its penetration by British agents (Sheedy, J. 2003).

Overview of the plot line

The play is set in 1993 in County Galway on the isolated island of Inishmore, which is situated off the coast of The Republic of Ireland. The plot involves a young INLA revolutionary called Padraic who loves nothing in the world more than his black cat Wee Thomas. This central character is a terrorist and tortures and blows up his victims. The juxtaposition of his obsessive sentiment for his cat and his violent behaviour is a source of much shocking humour in the play .

Padraic, whilst boasting of his terrorist tasks, is first depicted plucking the toe-nails off a dope-pusher in Northern Ireland, but news that his cat, Wee Thomas is ailing, is enough to reduce him to tears and send him rushing home to lnishmore. When he arrives home he learns that Wee Thomas had apparently been killed, and his first suspicions are directed towards his own father Donny and a neighboring boy, Davey. About to kill both of them Padraic is interrupted by three INLA members -Christy, Brendan and Joey -who reveal that they had organized the killing of Wee Thomas in retaliation for Padraic's crackdown on drug pushers who support the INLA. Events move rapidly and the confusion surrounding the death of Wee Thomas leads to the death of these three INLA members.

In the final scenes, the audience are confronted by onstage dismemberment, by Donny and Davey, under Padraic's order, of the bodies of Brendan and Joey and later Christy (critics refer to this as the splatter-fest ending); simultaneously there is a hint of marriage between Padraic and Mairead (a young girl who glorifies Padraic's political violence); when however Mairead learns that a substitute cat shot ealier by Padraic was in fact her beloved cat she shoots him. Simultaneously Mairead then declares herself the new Lieutenant and in a kind of coup de theatre a cat bounds onto the set, which we are quickly made to understand is the very alive, sexually predatory, Wee Thomas, in other words all fo the bloodshed has been for the wrong cat (Burke, 2006).