The Hard Man at King's Theatre

Tanja havde endnu engang været heldig at få gratis billetter til en teaterforestilling (ikke dårligt med den slags frynsegoder J ), så omkring kl. 19 gik vi ned til the King's Theatre for at se "The Hard Man".

Byrne is a hard man. A fixer. His journey through the ganglands of Glasgow’s East End has taken him from teenage truant to petty criminal to gangster and to prison.

“Ma roads mapped oot fur me. Ah keep a chib over the door an a blade in ma bedroom”

“I was providing a social service…I’d been prepared to do business with them when you hadn’t… My methods with defaulters were quick and to the point but they weren’t any different from your precious world just a bit less hypocritical and undisguised.”

Based on the life of Jimmy Boyle, who was credited as co-writer of the play and – at the time of its production – was still a prisoner in Barlinnie Special Unit.

The first act charts Johnny Byrne's Glasgow life from a boyhood of petty crime to brutality, murder, and 'hard man' status in adulthood.

The second act sees Byrne imprisoned and here the brutality is meted out by sadistic prison officers. Some saw the end of the play, where Byrne smears his naked body with his own excrement, as hopeless, where others saw in it the triumph of humanity.

'Ah promise yae ah'll make it as unpleasant as possible. If yir gonnae break me, yir gonnae break yersels tae.'

Vi var lidt spændte på at se stykket, da der i omtalen stod at det anbefaledes for aldersgruppen 15+, da det indeholdt "strong language, violence and full frontal male nudity".

Det var også temmelig voldeligt, med slagsmål, knivstikkeri og tortur, men det var også et spændende stykke med dygtige skuespillere.

I starten kneb det lidt at få det hele med, da stykket var på skotsk og en del af dialogen foregik med lyden af trommer i baggrunden, men efter lidt tid var det ikke noget problem J.

Du kan læse om stykket her og se en trailer her