How Brendan Learned to Drive

How does Irish immigrant Brendan learn to drive? With the help of a prostitute with a heart of gold and despite the protestations of his dead mother. Doesn't everyone? 

Playwright Ronan Noone comes from our urban neighbor/rival up the east coast, Boston. He emigrated to Boston from the cinematic Galway town, Clifden, a town famous for its traditional music.  Noone's lovely play Brendan was read this past Friday at my beloved Irish Arts Center. It is a play that clutches to the heart both American and Irish themes of humor, the sentiment of tradition and issues of assimilation.

Brendan was first produced in Boston's Huntingon Theatre in 2007 and is part of his professed "American Trilogy," the first part of which is The Atheist which enjoyed a very successful run here in NYC late last year. Brendan is the story of an immigrant's struggle to adapt to an America of ever  present "petrol and cigarettes," and of course the importance of the car to the American id. These ideas could come off as being cliche, but Mr. Noone handles these familiar concepts with joyfulness in his memory play.

Actor Dashiell Eaves, currently in Becky Shaw at the Second Stage Theatre, originated the title role of Brendan in Boston. It is a role that he is obviously comfortable with and happy to revisit.

The play may be called Brendan, but a great deal of the afternoon is devoted to Brendan's mother who, in many ways, conforms to stereotypes of the formidable Irish mother: she freezes Brendan with "your friends have a wonderful way of expressing themselves" when Brendan's friends throw around the f-word in the place of nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and the occasional preposition. It is a marvelous role, and the wonderful actress Roberta Maxwell possessed it as well as her character possessed her son well after her death.

Ciaran Crawford, who we last saw at the Irish Arts Center in Noone's Blowin of the Baile Gall, played Brendan's friend Steveo. The always engaging Geraldine Hughes is the prostitute with that heart of gold, Laura Heisler is Brendan's possible love interest, and Lou Meyers plays all the figures of authority in Brendan's life including the neighborhood bum. All were directed by Will Frears, son of Stephen, and the director of the George Street Playhouse's The Pillowman, one of my favorite productions of that year. This was a great opportunity to see more of the young director's work.

Brendan is a wonderful play, and I look forward to a full production in New York. Perhaps in full production, there would be fewer echoes of Brian Friel's Philadelphia Here I Come. However there are worst things than this particular anxiety of influence (there is performance anxiety to put it in Rose the Prostitute's words.) The mother, speaking from the grave through past letters, is a Friel-like technique, reminiscent of Private Gar speaking only to Public Gar on the night before his immigration to Philadelphia. In general, Brendan reminds me of what might have happened to Gar years after leaving Ballybeg and how he might have dealt with the death of the parent he left behind. Comparisions aside, Brendan wasn't grand. It was awesome.