BRENDAN Behan's prison play, The Quare Fellow, is 50 years old this year.

For the best part of 20 years, the play has lain dormant: just the kind of drama to catch the attention of the Oxford Stage Company, which specialises in giving the kiss of life to old works.

You may recall OSC's revival of Serjeant Musgrave's Dance at York Theatre Royal last November, and next week the company returns to pump blood through the veins of Behan's Irish comedy drama in a production directed by celebrated actress Kathy Burke.

Presented by a large cast of colourful characters, The Quare Fellow paints a portrait of life inside an Irish prison, in which songs, humour and compassion evoke the banter between inmates and wardens.

Sean Gallagher, best known for his role in the BBC series Linda Green, is part of Burke's cast of 17. "I knew of the play, and I knew of Behan but I hadn't ever read it. When I did, it seemed surprising that it hadn't been done for so long, and very odd that it had been ignored" he says. "Maybe it was down to the number of actors needed for the cast."

Sean had worked with Burke two years ago at the Hampstead Theatre in Jonathan Harvey's play Out In The Open.

"Out of the blue, she told me she might be doing The Quare Fellow and would I be interested?" he recalls. "Kathy's family is second generation Irish, and my father is from Dublin, and so here I am playing Prisoner B."

He is revelling in his first encounter with a Behan play.

"Behan was like the first punk," he says. "That's what Kathy has said from the beginning and that's why she admired him, and why so many people from all walks of life know of his work."

The Quare Fellow, Oxford Stage Company, York Theatre Royal, April 6 to 10.

Updated: 09:26 Friday, April 02, 2004