Probationary Theater’s new play “Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me,” explores the idea of nationalism and its importance in the way people see themselves.

The play, by Frank McGuinness, is based on the Lebanon hostage crisis in the 1990s and shows an American, an Irishman and an Englishman locked together in a windowless room. The men struggle with their national differences as well as their own senses of longing, despair, bewilderment and fear.

The three men struggle with their own misgivings and misunderstandings about each other and the constant threat of mental breakdown by delving into fantasies, memories and simple childlike play.

“The real beauty of this play is in the juxtapositions,” director Liam Mitchinson explains. “It’s a real rollercoaster of emotions. These people find themselves re-enacting great horse races and jumping around the stage pretending to be rabbits in a desperate attempt to never give in to the oppressiveness of their situation, the threat of madness, the fear of where they are. But then the game stops and they are back ― still in a cell that just for a moment they felt they had escaped from.”

Despite the extreme circumstances the men face, Probationary Theater’s creative director Desiree Munro says the play offers much that expatriates can empathizes with.

“Being an expat in another culture offers opportunities to reflect back on yourself and where you come from. In experiencing a foreign culture first hand you become more able to examine your own home culture with a fresh pair of eyes,” she says.

“One of the main themes in ‘Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me’ is the idea of nationalism and how an individual can deal with that when your homeland suddenly is rendered irrelevant.”

Mitchinson says that the sensitivity the men in the play have over how their homelands are seen is something that is mirrored in the expat experience in general.

“Being a particularly unpatriotic Australian, I still surprise myself at how quick I am to correct others when they make an assumption about where I come from,” says Mitchinson. “I think that most expats living in Korea can identify with that.”

As the men are thrown together as simply foreigners, they try to assert their differences and identities.

“Suddenly nationalistic differences from these three seemingly very similar western countries become one of the strongest weapons that the captors have, as the prisoners use their cultural identities and national histories as badges of honor,” explains Mitchinson.

“Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me” will be showing on Fridays (at 9 p.m.), Saturdays (8 p.m.) and Sundays (4 p.m.) from Nov. 11-20 at White Box Theater, near Hyochang Park Station on Line 6. Tickets are 15,000won and are available from www.probationarytheatre.com.

By Paul Kerry (paulkerry@heraldcorp.com)