Theater Casting Call for "The Lobby" Play

Ex-hero and current brothel keeper with his spouse Meg. Irish nationalist. Injured his leg during his service and was imprisoned by the British. Heavy on the drink, Pat is the caretaker of the brothel and lodging house and an old comrade of Monsewer’s. He is a tough, sardonic middle-aged ‘‘ex-hero’’ who fought in the Easter Uprising and the Irish Civil War. Pa

Pat’s consort, the real managing power behind the boardinghouse. Foul-mouthed and irreverent, she makes few moral judgments as long as the boarders pay the rent. She shares his sardonic sense of humor and dislike of hypocrisy and is particularly critical of Miss Gilchrist’s pious twittering. Meg is a romantic Irish nationalist and something of a sentimentalist: she sighs for the Irish fighting spirit of by-gone years and mourns for the Belfast prisoner.

The owner of the house and Pat’s former IRA commander. British by birth, he adopted his Irish mother’s nationality, learned Gaelic at university, and fought for Irish independence. Now comically senile, he is unaware of the real nature of the boardinghouse and imagines that it is a safe house for current IRA fugitives, whom he does not distinguish from freedom fighters of the 1920’s.

Colette is a younger prostitute who works in the brothel. Early in the play she complains about taking a communist as a customer.

Male, Princess Grace is a black sailor who is Rio Rita’s boyfriend. At the play’s end, he colludes with his boyfriend and Mulleady and betrays Pat and Monsewer. [RIO RITA] Male, Rio Rita is a homosexual navy man. Flamboyant and witty, he spends much of his time on stage flirting with his boyfriend, Princess Grace, or avoiding paying the rent he owes Pat. At the play’s end, Rio Rita joins forces with Mulleady and betrays Pat and Monsewer to the police.

Described in the play as a ‘‘decaying Civil Servant,’’ and as such he is part of the small group of lodging house inhabitants who think of themselves as ‘‘genteel’’ (part of the lower-middle class who aspire to the values and manners of the upper class). Mulleady carries on with an equally hypocritical partner, Miss Gilchrist, and the two of them band together in Act Two to sing songs that celebrate their pro-English and pro-monarchical values.

“Prim and Proper” Miss Gilchrist, a social worker full of pious platitudes. She has a tendency to confuse physical attraction with desire to save men’s souls. Not a regular inhabitant of the lodging house. An acquaintance of Mr. Mulleady’s, she appears with him after the two of them have been making ‘‘disgusting noises’’ in their room together for three hours.

English soldier - the titular “Hostage”. Private in the British army, stationed in Armagh, Northern Ireland. Too young to vote, innocent of politics and history, and an orphan who does not even have a girlfriend, he is coming out of a pub when the IRA “captures” him, imprisons him in Pat’s boardinghouse, and threatens to kill him if the British execute a convicted IRA terrorist they are holding.

Pat and Meg’s maid servant. She comes from the country, where she was educated in a strict Catholic convent. She had just one other job before coming to Dublin but had to leave because ‘‘there was a clerical student in the house.’’ She is out of her league in the lodging house and brothel, but she demonstrates her good heart by comforting Leslie.

The IRA Officer is a schoolmaster in his working hours and a tough man in his free time. His uptight bureaucratic attitude to the provisioning and securing of the hostage reflects his schoolmaster background. Behan describes him as a ‘‘thin-faced fanatic.’’ He shares with Miss Gilchrist a penchant for pious posturing. Pat dislikes his absolute humorlessness. [Russian Sailor] Male. Colette’s customer, who is actually a police spy.

Ropeen is an older prostitute with pro-British sympathies who works in the brothel.

VOLUNTEER. The inexperienced volunteer works as a ‘‘railway ticket-collector’’ to earn money and volunteers for the Cause when he can. His incompetency and soft-hardheartedness is a neat foil to his leader’s bureaucratic attitude and toughness, and he is utterly unable to stop people visiting Leslie.