James Coogan remembers.
Written for the BBC to be broadcast after the 9pm "watershed," This Day in Fear navigates the difficult terrain of the Anglo-Irish conflict with remarkable pragmatism - a fact of normal life that would have been a regular news item for UK audiences at the height of the so-called Border Campaign in 1957/58.
Against this highly politicized backdrop, a somewhat more archetypal crisis is being staged: seven years to the day on which a famous leader of the “Movement” was killed, James Coogan receives the results of his architectural exam. Exciting news indeed, but there is another message as well, and as a police inspector arrives to offer protection, Coogan’s future no longer seems certain. Nor does his past.
From a dialogue-driven, perfectly plotted script, the escalating campaign of intimidation against Coogan and his wife is presented as a live production would be in the theatre: it relies on the strength of the players to convey the mounting sense of insecurity and inevitability, of betrayal and disillusionment, but also manifestations of humour and love, revealing the humanity of the individuals involved - and the in-human, as much as the super-human acts expected of them.
While the play ultimately challenges the very notion of heroism and hero worship, with passionate pleas from all sides, more than anything it is the voice of one man which keeps us spell-bound, from the first hushed words spoken in that oh-so soft Irish brogue to the powerful revelation of the final scene. It is an unmistakable voice of course: of a man who longs for nothing more - and nothing less - than for his life to be his own.
