Tuesday 14th November – Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds
Guest Reviewer Suzanne Hawkes gives us her take on this very special evening, which was raising funds for Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds
With the escalating crisis in the Middle East it was a timely reminder of the human cost of such conflicts to spend the evening with two men, who know first hand what it is like to be innocents caught up in someone else’s violent struggle.
32 years ago journalist John McCarthy and the Archbishop’s special envoy Terry Waite were released from captivity, after being held hostage by militant Islamic groups in Lebanon for four and a half years, and five years four months respectively.
With a quiet dignity both men arrived on stage in the quaint and beautiful Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds, and in some respects this was like listening in to the conversation between two old friends reminiscing on past days. Yet the experiences they spoke of were harrowing and gruelling – recollections that were hard to listen to, about long periods of cruelty and deprivation that could easily have broken them.
For four years Terry had been in solitary confinement with only his thoughts to keep him company, chained to a radiator in a small, dank underground cell, cut off from the outside world, subject to mock executions and suffering from asthma.
John had been slightly more fortunate, in that after a brief period of solitary, he had been held first with Irish Lecturer Brian Keenan, and then with two American hostages before Terry joined him.
But both had to deal with similar trauma – constant anxiety, beatings, deprivation, lack of food and reading material, and totally cut off from family and news of what was happening in the outside world.
This evening was a tribute to their resilience and the remarkable resilience of human nature, that can find hope even in the darkest of places.
It was also a tribute to their friendship – a bond that they both admitted helped them to survive their ordeal – and the aftermath of freedom and all that entailed.
As they discussed their differing experiences before they were finally thrown together, literally, into the boot of a car, and then the continual challenges of their captivity, their genuine fondness for each other and the bond they developed during that time shone through.
As they spoke about the lead up to their kidnap and the years of incarceration, there were moments when both men discovered something new about how the other was motivated or coped at the time, and it was so touching to see the genuine interest and concern.
I have read all the books they subsequently produced about their ordeal – but hearing it spoken about by the men themselves gave it new weight and poignancy.
Neither seem to have harboured a hatred of their captors and neither seemed bitter about the lost years, but rather have embraced the experience as having formed them into better people.
They didn’t understate the suffering they and their families endured – but they were not prepared to wallow in it either. More they wanted to show how the human spirit can rise above the hatred and cruelty so prevalent in our world, both then and today, and use the experience for good.
Since their ordeal both have made it their life’s work to use their positions to help others and highlight suffering. John has used his journalistic skills and tours as a motivational speaker. Terry has founded the charity Hostage International, of which John is a patron, which works with freed hostages and their families around the world.
This was a profoundly moving evening which in spite of the subject matter was often humorous and touching in equal measure. It was a privileged to be in the company of these men – and in the Q&A afterward it was obvious how much the world lacks statesmen of their calibre in these current critical times.
Suzanne Hawkes
SUFFOLK THEATRE 