McKenna’s Fort a play about Roger Casement reviewed  
Tim O’Sullivan                

Irish Political Review
2 May 2016

McKenna’s Fort a play billed as being about Roger Casement’s role in the 1916 rising had its world premiere recently at the New Theatre in Dublin’s Temple Bar. It ran from March 21st to April 2nd. Arnold Thomas Fanning, the author, is from Ireland. Michael Bates played Casement. The play consists of a one man monologue. Such a production suits the small, intimate environment of the New Theatre. 

The title refers to the rath or remnant of an Iron Age circular dwelling enclosure where Casement hid out after landing by rowing boat from a German submarine with two companions in April 1916. The boat had capsized before reaching the shore and all three aboard tossed into the sea. After they had made the safety of Banna Strand wet to the skin they decided Casement would wait at McKenna’s Fort. Meanwhile the two others went to make contact with somebody who hopefully could bring him to Dublin to meet with the leadership of the planned rebellion. Casement believed the rebellion as planned would result in a bloodbath which could not lead to military success. He hoped the arms consignment from the ship the Aud could be landed, distributed and stored but not put to immediate use. He believed the time was not opportune for an insurrection. 

The action of the play, such as it is, consists of what might have gone on in Casements mind as he hides in the rath waiting for his associates Monteith and Bailey to return with the required assistance needed to get him to Dublin. At first his thoughts are on the possible rebellion which he feels to be “ghastly folly”. Then he remembers the cramped, foul environment he endured on the U-boat. The crew “hate me” and snigger as he holds a bucket to his chest.  

Then his thoughts go back to when he arrived in Germany in 1914 and what he considered his great diplomatic coup when he persuaded the German government to make a declaration of goodwill towards Ireland and Irish independence. Then he is nine years old and he is slowly coming to realize his mother has died. His father is then remembered as a man who died penniless in a hotel in Ballymena and as being “famous” for conducting séances. The suggestion is of a childhood marred by tragedy and parental inadequacy. 

The play then becomes a potted history of Casement’s life up to his submarine voyage from Germany. What we get is a canonical Casement; the canon being that of Irish historical revisionism. 

Some incidents are contrived from the imagination. Others are based on the extensive throve of Casement associated archival documentation which has found an outlet in the printed output of various authors. An irritation is the anachronisms which crop up from time to time. These are mainly Americanisms which would have been unheard of a century ago. Casement once describes his sister Nena as “feisty”. Irish prisoners of war he refers to as “POWs”. 

Casement exhibits egomania. After he recalls listening to the Africa explorer Stanley speak in London he remarks with enthusiasm “a whole continent was there; needing me”. An aspect of his walks is looking out for and evaluating what he called “types”; men of a younger age group who he might find attractive and who could possibly be potential sexual partners. One of the invented scenes has him go down an alleyway in Paris with a young man he expects to experience some intimacy with only to be robbed at knife point. 

In another invented incident Casement is staying in Stanleypool in the Congo and has gone out for a walk with John his bulldog. John barks at the village boys and Casement beats him repeatedly with his stick until it is broken across his back. The dog whimpers the whole time, not understanding what he has done wrong. It is a scene with a sinister nuance; a man out for a walk with his dog, the anonymous village boys, the dog barking then whimpering and the frantic assault with the stick. This vignette is at odds with the reports we have of Casement in regard to animals, especially dogs, which relate his kindness and sympathy. 

The text gives the impression not a single man answered Casement’s call to enlist in his Irish Brigade when in fact about 50 did so. Casement’s alleged lover Millar Gordon crops up. They fall out because Gordon has signed the Ulster Covenant! There are reminiscences of various sexual encounters with young males in Peru and Brazil. 

As he hears people coming towards him in the rath he muses he had always expected to have a role in Irish history given a chance. He is thinking that the people arriving are going to help him get to Dublin to complete his mission. 

The Casement that emerges is a disjointed personality, compassionate yet with a violent streak, idealistic yet madly vain, capable yet delusional, desirous of doing great deeds yet lacking depth of character. His views on Ireland or on Germany and the war are not explained save for the suggestion of mild psychosis which in the script hovers over and about the main character.  

Michael Bates proves a versatile and effortless mimic. In the 75 minutes or so of the production he speaks German, French and Irish as well as rendering a variety of accents and characters more or less flawlessly. The way he rendered Casement lacked the passion one would expect for a historical personality known to have been deeply emotional. The script required the actor to render a combination of the soulless automaton of the infamous diaries and the historic personality known as Roger Casement. Such an effort can not avoid a certain touch of lifeless incoherence.        

McKenna’s Fort runs as part of the 13th International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival 2016 at The Teachers Club (Studio), Parnell Street West, Dublin, from May 2nd to May 7th 2016 at 7.30pm.