Three Plays. One week-end. What to do?

Three Irish plays are closing this week-end. Isn't NYC a wonderful place? To have three Irish plays running, and it's not even theatre festival season.

The Counting Squares Theatre's The Importance of Being Earnest closes Saturday.

The Pearl's Playboy of the Western World, with Sean McNall and Lee Stark, closes on Sunday as does the Druid Theatre's The New Electric Ballroom at St. Ann's Warehouse. Pictured below is Ruth McCabe.

If you have to choose one, make it Earnest for the chance to see the rare Gribsby scene. If you can't make it to Earnest:

Playboy features OBie-winning Sean McNall, one of the most talented actors working in New York today.

If you go to Brooklyn, make sure you stop for chocolate at Jacques Torres. It is the best chocolate in the world, and that is important too!

A Beguiling Wilde

In the two decades that Irish theatre has engaged me, I have seen many of Oscar Wilde's Lady Bracknells. Double digits to be sure. More Bracknells than Wilde's bon mots? Not quite, but many. One standout in my age-fogged brain is Lynn Redgrave for being able to project authority and displeasure throughout the cavernous Harvey Hall at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Another wonderful Bracknell, really the top of the list, was Nancy Marchand. She made her Bracknell into someone with absolute dominion, next to whom Livia Soprano was a pushover. I cannot hear "Prism! Where is that baby?" without a delighted shiver and a thought about Nancy Marchand.

Last night, at the Counting Squares Production of The Importance of Being Earnest, I added another Lady Bracknell to my Best of Bracknell list. Although the production on the whole veers toward slapstick, sacrificing the compulsory seriousness of the comedy (it is, after all, the importance of being earnest), this Earnest is thoroughly enjoyable, and Haas Regen's Lady Bracknell makes it even more so.

Mr. Regen, who apparently went to the Dame Edith Evans Acting School for this role, is unconditionally and perfectly resolute. His humorlessness adds to the humor of a play theNew York Times deemed the greatest comedy of the last millennium.

He is emotionless when all around are swirling in inappropriate (by Victorian standards) emotions. Mr. Regen captures the Wilde masterpiece in toto(mercifully there are no drag jokes here) – a Gorgon wearing a lovely 'ladies who lunch' suit.

The cross-gendered Lady Bracknell is not without precedent. This past summer, Brian Bedford played the role, and it was not the first time a male Lady Bracknell held court at the Stratford Theatre Festival. In fact, controversial social critic Camille Paglia called for all the female roles in Earnest to be played by men in order to better illustrate the duality of the characters – Jack/Earnest Worthing, Algernon Montcrieff/Earnest Worthing, and Cecily, who may be the aunt or she may be a niece. Even Lady Bracknell is not who she seems. She has all the imperiousness of old money, and it comes as a surprise that she made her own fortune with her marriage.

But back to Bracknell: the character's sexuality is the least of her attributes; it matters not the gender of the actor. All that matters is decorum.

From the opening scene, when Algernon (Ryan Nicholoff, below) plays his electric guitar with great distortion, and his butler Lane deems it "impolite to listen," it is apparent that this is a different Earnest. The dress is modern, the allusions local, and the geographical detail loaded with parochial significance. The Worthing Estate might be in Westchester; it might be in the Hamptons. New Yorkers know the status difference between those two locales as well as Wilde's audience knew and appreciated the implications of Shropshire and Hertfordshire.

Jacques Roy, as Jack Worthing, begins the evening as a master of the universe. The role descends into farce. It is more Ben Stiller meeting some parents than the stuff of Victorian raised eyebrows. Ryan Nicholoff plays his character, Algernon Montcrieff, quite broadly as well. Algy has all the best lines; he doesn't have to work so hard for the laughs.

It is a shame that using modern dress deprives the audience of one of the greatest jokes inThe Importance of Being Earnest – the entrance of Jack Worthing in full mourning costume. His bereavement at the death of his brother, who doesn't exist but manages to materialize in the next room, is the height of absurdity. It marks the moment where the centers of the friends' duplicitous lives cannot hold, and everything spirals out of control. It is a small point, but a fascinating one. What to do about the mourning costume?

There are missteps in the characterizations of the governess Miss Prism (Edward Davis) and the local minister Canon Chausable (Matt Greenbaum). Miss Prism's character has too much confidence, too much strength to be the crack in the foundation of all these pretty manners. Miss Prism should be all efficiency and attitude with her pupil, and all inefficiency and self-doubt with her peers and employers. She is a weak-minded person. Keep in mind her definition of what fiction is: "good people ending happily, bad ending unhappily." This, along with her literary output – the three volume novel – is a not-too-subtle jab by Wilde at his literary contemporaries. Miss Prism, although allowed to have a happy ending, is not an admirable character. As for Canon Chausable, there was altogether too much inexplicable shouting. Lines are not funnier for being louder.

Re-reading the above, I sound like a really cranky critic. It's just a matter of being cruel to be kind; after all, we live "in an age of ideals...All the more expensive monthly magazines" say so.

A not to be missed highlight of this Earnest is the inclusion of the famously rare "Gribsby scene," one that most productions leave out. Oscar Wilde had been persuaded to edit out the scene for brevity's sake. it was delightful to see Gribsby, not only because of the scene's infrequency, but because it gives us the chance to spend more time with these characters. This is not always the feeling I have at the theatre. I applaud the inclusion of the scene. There is a delicious irony in Algernon being presented with a restaurant bill run up by Jack Worthing to prove the existence of his brother Ernest. Algernon, donning the identity of Ernest, then becomes the debtor. With the persona comes the dues.

Appropriately, Jack clearly resents being forced to pay his brother's debts which are really his own. Paying his own debts helps his once-friend, now rival Algy in Algy's cause célèbre – being the real Ernest Worthing.

Tiffany Baker is an ebullient Cecily Cardew, ebullience tempered with petulance – not an easy balance to strike. This Cecily strikes many poses, trying on her many identities.

One of my favorite performances of the night was Madeleine Maby's as Gwendolyn Fairfax. Sometimes this character can get lost between the strength of her mother, Lady Bracknell, the antics of her betrothed, Jack Worthing, and the wit of her cousin, Algernon. Among so many swirling personalities, poor Gwendolyn can disappear, but Ms. Maby commanded her place. So much so that you knew that she would indeed be fated to be like her mother some day. That is her tragedy.

Directed by Jordan Reeves, this Importance of Being Earnest is very clever. But to paraphrase Oscar, I'm sick to death of clever Earnests. They are all clever. That's how the great writer made them. It's just as important to be energetic, funny, and relevant to the contemporary audience. The Counting Squares production was just that – a vital Importance of Being Earnest.

Chris Worley (left), Tiffany Baker and Ryan Nicholoff

Counting Squares Theatre presents The Importance of Being Earnest at Under St. Mark's through November 22nd.

If Only She Stooped to Review 'She Stooped to Conquer.'

I never got the chance to write a proper blog on the McCarter Theatre's She Stoops to Conquer. That is indeed misfortunate because it was a wonderful production. Well-acted and constructed. I'm jotting this down now to jog my memory. At year's end, if I come up with a 'Besta' column, awards season being what it is, I will certainly put She Stoops in the Best Costume category. Look at this "Deconstructed, Reconstructed for the Restoration" Chanel Suit. Just cuckoo bananas and I love it. This is Kristine Nelson as Mrs. Hardcastle, Brooks Ashmankas as Tony Lumpkin (in what was a comic highlight of 2009) and Rebecca Brooksher as Constance Neville in background.

She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith.

(Click on photos to view Bios) (From left to right) Brooks Ashmanskas;Rebecca Brooksher;Francesca Choy-Kee;Rich Dreher; Zackary Grady; Brent Langdon;Adam Lerman; Kristine Nielsen; John O’Creagh;Jessica Stone; Jon Patrick Walker; Jeremy Webb; Paxton Whitehead; Direction Nicholas Martin Set Design David Korins Costume Design Gabriel Berry Lighting Design Ben Stanton Sound Design Drew Levy Dialect Coach Louis Colaianni (Click on name to view Bio)

What to do with those 400 unpublished stories?

When Martin McDonagh's The Pillowman opened in the spring of 1995, I was its biggest advocate. I thought the balance of black, black humor and serious discussion of the consequences of art was extraordinary. I was too big a fan perhaps. It may have been ill-advised of me to insist to Brían O'Bryne, at that time starring in Doubt, how The Pillowman should win a Tony for Best New Drama. Doubt won that Tony.

The Astoria Performing Arts Center features The Pillowman as its first mainstage production this 2009-10 season. It is a daring beginning. The Pillowman is a difficult play and couldn't be further from some of APAC's previous productions, Ragtime for example. The stark contrast is intentional, said both executive director Taryn Drongowski and artistic director Tom Wojtunik. In their opinions, a divisive play, like The Pillowman, is necessary for the growth of the young theatre company.

Just how fractious a play is The Pillowman? When it first appeared on the British stage, one reviewer wrote that it was "a hopelessly disorganized play in which the action keeps grinding to a halt so the main character can read out one of a half dozen or so interminable short stories. It felt less like an evening at the theatre than being trapped in a Creative Writing Workshop." That critic left during intermission.

Here in New York City, our own Clive Barnes wrote in the New York Post: "who said that child torture, murder and mutilation can't be funny?" Mr. Barnes obviously liked the play.

It may be hard to imagine how child torture, murder and mutilation can be funny, but in Martin McDonagh's world, it is. McDonagh, famously Anglo-Irish, usually sets his play in statistically overly murderous rural Irish towns. The Pillowman is his only drama set outside of Ireland. The distance improves the drama.

The setting is a nameless, rather timeless, vaguely Eastern European totalitarian state. The action is storytelling – storytelling in both its sense, as narrative and as misrepresentation. Stories loop continuously throughout the familiar bad cop/good cop interview room scenario.

A writer (Avery Clark) is brought in for questioning about crimes that may or may not have something to do with his stories, most of which have gone unpublished. I know. Unpublished. It gets more horrific than that.

The crimes target children, and the methods of murder mimic those found in the writer's tales. The police question the writer, but the writer doesn't understand. "He wants us to think that he thinks that all we've got against him is a disagreement with his…prose style" states Officer Tupolski emphatically.

Avery Clark (Katurian) and Seth Duerr (Tupolski). Photo: Jen Maufrais Kelly

The performance of the role of the writer is pivotal to the play. Mr. Clark is all appropriate earnestness about his concerns over the crimes, the perpetrator (is it or isn't it the writer's brother?), and most of all, his efforts at writing. What is also necessary, besides the sincerity, is the artist's self-delusion. Katurian Katurian, for that is indeed his name, is clueless.

As played by Mr. Clark, Katurian is the self-conscious artist, but there should also be a creeping element of illusion. In describing one of his stories, he declares it to be "good"; by the end of the sentence, he is defending the story (a horrible story in all ways) as "having nothing wrong with it." Katurian is not a hero and shouldn't be played as one. A definition of art as something that "has nothing wrong with it" is not a principle to defend with one's life.

Katurian is not the noble artist – he is simply a writer who is in desperate need of a good editor.

I give a great deal of credit to McDonagh for being able to weave this elaborate joke, aimed at himself and all writers, all artists. There is no limit to the depths of self-delusion about one's own creative process: That story I wrote? "That's a good story. That's something – esque."

Interestingly enough, as so often happens Katurian is quietly competent as a critic or editor of others' stories, pointing out the "inconsistencies" in the policeman's own attempt at storytelling. However, Katurian is confused in just about everything else, and that's a pretty funny place for a writer to put a writer.

The role of the brain-damaged brother is a troublesome one. "Itchy arse" jokes certainly have their place, but let's just say that it lowers the level of discourse some. A role of cheap laughs, Katurian's brother, Michal, is easy to dislike on paper, but there is no denying it seems an actor's joy to play. Michael Stuhlbarg originated the role on Broadway (not a household name, except that he is the lead in the latest Coen Brothers movie).

Nathan Brisby has as much fun with the role as I have seen anyone have, dealing with the incongruities in story and character. Michal is a child in his mind but uses words like "minimum" and "execute" and "criticize." When it suits McDonagh, Michal is more than his brother's most enthusiastic audience, he is also his most discerning reader. For awhile, he is the writer's only reader, until the police raid their apartment and discover Katurian's 400 stories.

Nathan Brisby (Michal) and Avery Clark (Katurian). Photo: Jen Maufrais Kelly

Michal insists on holding his brother's efforts up to some sort of standard, as arbitrary as that may be. In a under-explored aspect of The Pillowman, Michal is examining reality, choosing reality – with disastrous results. When Katurian gets a glimpse of reality, he resorts to murder.

Most of the humor of the play comes from the mismatched pair of cops who interrogate the writer. Tupolski (Seth Duerr) is all snide remarks and understatements. Ariel (Richard D. Busser) is the "bulldog of a policeman," the brawn of the operation. Ariel's name alone carries too much symbolism – the Lion of God, Shakespeare's sprite, and a little mermaid. Clichés are what drives much of this comedy, and inversion of expectations are what constitutes dramatic tension.

Instead of avoiding the clichés, McDonagh embraces them. At one point, Tupolski exclaims at just how tired he is of everyone using their abusive childhoods to excuse their bad behavior: "My father was a violent alcoholic so am I a violent alcoholic?…Yes but that is my personal choice." These moments must be absurdly funny in order to balance the tragedies.

Karen Stanion is excellent as the many mothers of the play. She makes the most of her brief appearances on stage. Her presence is noteworthy in a play that depicts women as either monsters or young victims. This is in no way a feminist screed against McDonagh's play. I am not calling for more female characters. I've seen what Mr. McDonagh does to the women in his play (the carnage of Beauty Queen of Lenaneanyone?). It is just as well that he leaves this fictional police state in the hands of men.

An equal opportunity portrayer of "slaughter," Mr. McDonagh has as many wicked fathers as he has wicked mothers – the father here well played by Justin Herfel.

The rest of the cast, the children, are Anthony Peierini as the Boy and Jordan Bloom as the Girl, two particularly brave performances and impressive additions to beginning resumes. The children suffer horribly in this play, and this is made more surprising, by all accounts, by the fact that McDonagh had a perfectly happy childhood.

APAC's stage design (Stephen Dobay) was very impressive. Although the stark setting for the police station is simplicity, the tableaux that need to be set up around the station must have been demanding.

Katurian challenges the policemen (and the audience) who dismiss his stories: "Are you trying to say that I shouldn't write stories with child killings in because in the real world there are child killings?" Are we saying that? No. But we can insist that the stories be good stories. The Pillowman, both Katurian's and McDonagh's, is a good story. Now to go back to the 400 unpublished theatre reviews in my basement...

The Pillowman runs through November 21 at the Good Shepherd United Methodist Church, Astoria, Queens.

O' Rosencrantz and McGuildenstern Are Dead

Recently I reviewed Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern for Blogcritics. I wasn't going to post the review here, on an Irish Theatre blog, until it occurred to me to stress just how beholden Stoppard was to Beckett's Waiting for Godot. Sure, it's rationalization, but it's my blog. I can post if I want to.

There should be a rule, unwritten perhaps, but written would be nice too, that wherever Hamlet is played, there shall be a Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead nearby. The sheer geographic proximity between the two plays in New York City right now adds a delicious layer of irony onto the latter, a Tom Stoppard piece of theatre that is a skyscraper of incongruities. Two minor characters fromHamlet wander 18 blocks south through midtown traffic and end up at the T. Schreiber Studio to discuss matters both existential and pre-determined.

Adding a layer of irony to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead may put the whole play, dense with derivative comedy and tragedy, in danger of collapsing under the weight of its own ideas, but this production, directed with precision and wit by Cat Parker, stands strong. It holds up under the immeasurable weirdness of Mr. Stoppard's art – the "un-, sub-, supernatural forces" that swarm through this wild discourse on Shakespeare, Beckett, theatre in general, and mankind in particular.

Photo credit: Gili Getz

Outside of the recent Sunday matinee, runners walked home with New York City Marathon medals around their neck. Inside the Gloria Maddox Theatre, Julian Elfer (right) as Guildenstern and Eric Percival as Rosencrantz (or is it the other way around?) prepared themselves for a marathon of sorts, a verbal sprint to their pre-ordained – "for that is what was written" – finish. Their entrance, their starting line, is surrounded by portraits of famous Hamlets who look down on their old school mates, Guildenstern and Rosencrantz: Sarah Bernhardt and John Barrymore, and their theatrical descendants: Sir Lawrence, Mel Gibson, Kenneth Branagh, Kevin Kline whose Ophelia, Diane Verona, would go on to play Ethan Hawke's Gertrude, and of course, the current Hamlet, Jude Law, looking distracted by reviews that may have been less than kind.

Don't worry, Mr. Law. John Lahr in the New Yorker liked you, and that is certainly a rich gift.

Mr. Percival, bearing some resemblance to Gary Oldman (who was Rosencrantz in the 1990 film written and directed by Mr. Stoppard), is the comedy mask of the pair. Blissfully unaware – except at moments of extreme clarity ("It's all over my depth!") – and choosing to remain that way, Rosencrantz is the voice of the audience. He wants a beginning, middle, ending. He demands some sustained action. It is a wonderfully comic role, and Mr. Percival has great fun with it. He has all the required physical comedy with some talent at magic tricks thrown in, an advantage given all the coin tosses Rosencrantz must win at the expense of probability.

Julian Elfer, winner of this year's New York Innovative Theatre Award for Best Actor in Twelfth Night brings more than enough intensity to Guildenstern, a character whom I always saw as the the voice of the critic. He is a "mass of prejudice" even in the eyes of his friend. Suitably unlikable, Mr. Elfer's Guildenstern dismisses the Tragedians, en route to Elsinore to play for the royal family: "I was prepared. But it's this, is it? No enigma, no dignity, nothing classical, portentous, only this - a comic pornographer and a rabble of prostitutes."

Yep, that's all the theatre is, G. And don't you love it?

Both Mr. Percival and Mr. Elfer, while waiting for Hamlet, excel at the remarkable and remarkably derivative Beckettian dialogue. They are Estragon and Vladimir:

Guildenstern: Do you remember the first thing that happened today?

Rosencrantz: I woke up, I suppose. Oh – I've got it now – that man, a foreigner, he woke us up –

Guil: A messenger.

Ros: That's it….You remember that – this man woke us up.

Guil: Yes.

Ros: We were sent for.

Guil: Yes.

Ros: That's why we're here. Traveling.

Guil: Yes.

You get the idea. New York City is fresh from a memorable production of Waiting for Godot. We welcome Gogo and Didi putting on a road picture: The Road to Elsinore starring Bob Guildenstern and Bing Rosencrantz.

Together the pair meld well into the two sides of the same coin, a coin they may have in pocket, but Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead belongs the Player King: the voice of the playwright, the voice of the song of the canon from the Greeks onward. Only the Player King has free will, Only he has some control over all the chaos in the rotten state of Denmark. The charismatic Erik Jonsun maneuvers his troupe of Tragedians, Guildenstern and Rosencrantz, and the audience, seated in the round like members of the Danish court, into realization: "Don't you see?! We're actors – we're the opposite of people!"

Mr. Jonsun is very persuasive as the Player. I found him to be forceful even before I read his biography in the playbill. It turns out that he is a veteran of the US Coast Guard and the Army Infantry. He received the Purple Heart in 2004 for service in Iraq. Mr. Jonsun indeed knows "the soldiers' music and the rites of war."

Hamlet, Tim Weinert, strides emphatically through his Shakespearian scenes, tossing Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Ophelia (Marguerite Forrest), Polonius (Tom Lawson, Jr.), his mother (Tootie Larios), and a robotic Claudius (Doug Williford) in his wake. His mode and makeup are as Richard Burton in hisHamlet or Richard Alpert in Lost.

The efficient stage design, built around a directionless compass, is by George Allison. The Tragedians are Esteban Benito, Meghan Brown, Horacio Lazo, James O'Brien, Janine Pangburn, Diane Terrusa, Aki Tsuchimoto, Therese Tucker, and Rodney Allen Umble. All are opulently costumed by Karen Ann Ledger.

In a poignant moment at the beginning of the play, the portraits are taken down from their places on the walls, and the minor characters of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern become the major characters, mirroring our own existential anxieties in their comic squabbles. At the end ofRosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, the characters' spotlight moment fades; they are relegated back to offstage action. The Hamlets return to their portraitures. Stoppard riffs on Oscar Wilde's "The good end happily, the bad end unhappily, That is what fiction means." In Stoppard's theatrical world, "The bad end unhappily. The good unluckily." As for this production ofRosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, I'll let reviewer Guildenstern speak for me: "Brilliantly re-created – if these eyes could weep!…Rather strong on the metaphor, mind you. No criticism – only a matter of taste."

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead will run through November 22nd at the Gloria Maddox Theatre.

Happy Birthday Mr. Wilde

On hiatus for a bit from the blog. Wish I were more consistent but then again:

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

Slán Leat to 1st Irish

Last Sunday, Joe Hurley from the Irish Echo was kind enough to bring me to the last performance of Antoine O' Flatharta's, Blood Guilty, my final visit to the 1st Irish 2009 Theatre Festival. It was a sold-out house, a successful production, and a reminder that I was overdue for a wrap-up on an outstanding five weeks of theatre.

Photo by Shanna Ravindra

1st Irish handed out their awards last week. Everyone loves an award ceremony - even when held at the Hudson Terrace which was antiseptic and grossly overpriced. Recipients, presenters, and fans all enjoyed themselves more when the party moved over to Michael Younge's wonderful Landmark Tavern. Original tin ceilings, stained glass, bevelled mirrors - it all seemed a more suitable mise en scène for stories from the old country. Or should I hold the French? Láthair in Irish Gaelic.

The Dublin-based theatre company, Fishamble, was a big winner at the awards and throughout the festival with their production of Sebastian Barry's The Pride of Parnell Street. The play cleaned up. Mary Murray won a most-deserved Best Actress, and the play received Best Production. Mary's fellow cast member, Aidan Kelly, was nominated for Best Actor. Director Jim Culleton was nominated for Best Director, and Sabine D'Argent for Best Design.

Other winners of these first 1st Irish 2009 Theatre Awards included Best Actor for Ethan Hova from Spinning the Times, Best Director Tim Ruddy for the Irish Repetory's two one-acts by Conal Creedon, After Luke/When I Was God, and Best Set Design which went to Susan Zeeman Rogers for the Mint Theatre's Is Life Worth Living? A special Jury Award for Special Achievement went to Barbara Hammond for her Beyond the Pale, also a nomination for Best Production.

Looking at the excellent set design at Blood Guilty, I was determined to add my own honorable mentions to the above winners' list. Christopher Jensen, set/lighting designer for Blood Guilty, also did The Good Thief and Walking the Road - all in rotation, sometimes on the same day. The set for Blood Guilty, an old farmhouse with decades worth of clutter, is broken down to the spare set of The Good Thief - a chair and a bottle of whiskey - and then on to a World War I battlefield. Of course, credit too must go to stage managers April Ann Klein and Olivia Gemelli.

I'd like to give out a few more of my own awards if you can bear some of the clichès!

If pressed, I choose Mark Doherty's Trad as best play/production. It was nominated for Best Production, but puzzlingly, its director, Tom Reing, from the Philadelphia-based Inis Nua Company was overlooked in nominations. I'm not sure how a play can be a best anything without its director. A play's existence is too balanced among many to separate the director from the production. But then again, that's the problem with awards, isn't it. Trad embraced and surpassed so much tradition in Irish drama and did it with physical comedy and wit.

The No One Asked My Opinion But... Award goes to Aidan Kelly for best actor. The award has nothing to do with the fact that he took over the role a mere two weeks before coming to the 1st Irish, but that is an accomplishment. Aidan made the most of a character that can be a cipher in Sebastian Barry's sweeping, poetic narrative. Aidan is pictured below with his co-star, Mary Murray.

Hardest Work Man in Show Business must go to John Keating who directed both the Good Thief and Cell while appearing daily in two roles in Is Life Worth Living? Is a vacation worth taking now, John?

Speaking of Cell, I'd like to award it the Don't Bring the Children Award. I bestow this award on Paula Meehan's play because, well, someone brought the children. A toddler really. Front row. The audience was understandably anxious during a particularly graphic prison sex scene - a glance at the actors, and a nervous glance at the child. Thank goodness, the f-word doesn't sound quite so harsh when spoken with a brogue.

The Best Reference to Blogging Award goes to Rosalind Haslett's Gin In a Teacup, part of Spinning the Times. Asyan Celik embodied a blogger obsessed with vintage fashion. She supposedly enjoyed "hundreds of hits" when she posted an update on her site. Oh the fantasy!

Also part of Spinning the Times, I'd like to give Geraldine Aron's Miracle Conway the award for Most Likely to Reappear as a Broadway Musical. So many musicals are being taken off the shelf and dusted these days - Bye, Bye Birdie, and Finian's Rainbow. So many musicals need a little dusting right where they are: Phantom, Shrek, Mary Poppins come to mind. I propose a new addition to the musical theatre - shiny, sparkling, and most of all entertaining: Miracle Conway: The Musical. Rosemary Fine blazed as the lively Miracle Conway, gifted pop lyricist and mental health patient. Perhaps the show can open next to Next to Normal.

The Craic and Crackers Award goes to Megan Riordan who served cheeseballs and chatted up the audience before her show, Luck.

The I'm Much More Than Just an Irish Thug Award goes to Aidan Redmond (below) of Blood Guilty for bringing dimension to the thug who roughs up a poor blind farmer. His castmate Paul Nugent wins the Best Death Scene Award for his big, long, chewy demise. Joe Hurley told me the violence depicted in Blood Guilty happened a lot in the 80s: Dublin hoodlums went out into the countryside and preyed upon the elderly poor on their sparse farm. This was before the Celtic Tiger, and maybe we doomed to have it happen again.

Finally, the Like Clockwork Award goes to Mark Anthony Noonan who, for the second year in a row, turned out a spectacular performance in Dermot Bolger's Walking the Road. Last year, Mr. Noonan, as Rum and Vodka's unnamed monologuist, brought out the William Carlos Williams-like beauty of Conor McPherson's alcohol-soaked Dublin:

"We sped through town.

People tried to flag our taxi.

I saw fights.

Men and women fighting.

Arguments outside chippers

Drunks asleep in the street

Down North Strand.

People walking home.

It was starting to rain."

Infamous theatre critic Kenneth Tynan once declared that the Irish had "a sacred duty to send over every few years a playwright to save the English language from inarticulate glumness." 1st Irish now wards off inarticulate glumness every year.

The 2nd annual 1st Irish Theatre Festival extends with both Luck at 59 East 59th and Is Life Worth Living at the Mint Theater until Oct. 11th.