IRISH STAGE in NYC

On This Day in Western Canon History....

2012-02-14T09:46:00.000-08:00

The greatest comedy ever written opened at the St. James Theatre in 1895. With an
irony that no one could have dramatized, The Importance of Being Earnest marked Oscar Wilde's pinnacle of success and the beginning point of his downfall. If only he had followed his own advice and taken "the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality."

Not Once But Many Times

2012-02-02T07:00:00.000-08:00

Blog under suspension while Blogger grapples with a presentation for the Northeast MLA Convention entitled:

“Only Once? John Carney’s Guy as Perpetuity of Cultural Destinism in Irish Literary Self-Defintion”

Cultural Destinism?! Wish me luck.

Suggestions welcome!

Culture Ireland and the APAP: On a Clear Day, You Can See Forever

2012-01-09T07:22:00.000-08:00

Hanora and Noel Kilkenny, Consul General of New York, once again played the gracious hosts yesterday in welcoming the Culture Ireland's contigent to the APAP - the Association for the Performing Arts Presenters Conference, here in NYC from Jan. 5-9. More than 30 delegates from Ireland representing all art forms attended the annual conference. Many more than 30 perched high above the East River in the Consulate's peregrine-like abode (see above.)

Some of the bright notables in attendance at the gathering: Garry Hynes from Druid preparing for the anticipated DruidMurphy (above) here in NYC in July at Lincoln Center, Charlotte Moore and Ciaran O'Reilly from the Irish Repertory Theatre, Pauline Turley and Aidan Connelly from the Irish Arts Center, and the members of the supergroup The Gloaming who were on their way to a Webster Hall gig later that night. Playwrights Deirdre Kinahan (Bogboy) and Jimmy Kerr (Ardnaglass on the Air) were also in the crowd, all welcomed by minister Jimmy Deenihan, TD, Minister of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht. It was the first time an Irish Minister appeared at APAP.

Jimmy Kerr told me about his new play, a serious play by what he says, but how he says it, with his notoriously infectious laugh, indicates otherwise. He says his new work is killing him, but that his apartment has never been cleaner, apparently he is avoiding writing in order houseclean. I both avoid writing and housework. I wouldn't know.

George Heslin is beginning plans for the 2012 1st Irish festival - it is a fifth year commemoration and will be the best yet if hard work is any portent. Tom Reing from Philadelphia's Inis Nua came up for the occasion and speaks glowingly of his theatre company's new space. The upcoming Little Gem will be the first production at 1636 Sansom Street (17th and Sansom). I'll be making the trip south in May for their production of The Walworth Farce. Can't wait!

The Happy Destiny of Inishfree? Again

2011-12-22T14:12:00.000-08:00

What does it say about me that I chose to spend the last night of my 40s in a single seat front row of St. Ann's Warehouse, catching Cillian Murphy's end run of Misterman? It means I'm consistent because that's pretty much how I've spent the decade prior. Well, maybe not front row. And not Cillian Murphy. That last bit was a little Parks and Rec "treat yo' self."

Photograph: Pavel Antonov

I firmly believe that every Enda Walsh production should require two tickets per person: one for the present performance and another for a few weeks later, after the play's had a chance to settle in the brain and move around with the same frenetic energy of Murphy's Thomas Magill. Walsh's plays are such pandemonium that repeated viewings are the only way to truly appreciate his gift.

Front row would be a nice requirement for all, but I don't know how practical it would be if everyone at a performance had a front row seat. St. Ann's would require an even more cavernous set, and Cillian would have to do more running in sandals and threadbare socks.

Some thoughts from the second time round. If you have a moment, discuss this with me!

Can someone get me an early version of this play?!!! The ending is even more problematic with full knowledge of what's coming. And I'd love to know what was added to get from the original 43 minutes running time of this play (see the Irish Echo's original review of 2001 with George Heslin as Thomas) to the current 1 hour 20 minutes? Is there more notebook writing?
How long do you think Thomas has lived in the warehouse? The stage directions call for a set where someone is "trying to live and has lived in for some time." How can this be in such a small town with Thomas the person he is? And what happened to Mammy?
What is the relationship between Mrs. O'Donnell's kind words as evidenced by Thomas' tape early in the play and his reenactment of her angry, tearful accusations?

I'm not trying to poke holes in Walsh's narrative threads. On the contrary, I am celebrating this deconstruction of a playwright's process: "Hello everyone" says Thomas in the very first line of the play. Welcome to his hell.

On a brighter note, I met Tadhg Murphy (above left in a shout down with Karl Shiels in Penelope) last night after the show, he of The Walworth Farce and other plays, some not written by Enda Walsh, like the one he's embarking on next at the Gate: the classic Da by Hugh Leonard.

During our conversation, Mr. Murphy recommended Once. "Brilliant" is what he said actually, and agreed I could quote him. I'm delighted by his positive opinion since I'm on my way there now.

Thomas Magill's Last Tape?

2011-12-14T13:33:00.000-08:00

Image credit: Colm Hogan

Dateline: Brooklyn, NY. Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape is downtown, and Enda Walsh’s Misterman is uptown Down Under the Manhattan Bridge. Misterman, a nickname for the comically and seriously disturbed Thomas Magill, has a tape too, and he is reflecting in a different way (and a little more vengefully) than Mr. Beckett’s anti-hero.

Playwright and Dublin native Enda Walsh reminds me of the Venetian composer Antonio Vivaldi. You overhear a Vivaldi concerto and you may not know what song it is (which season is that? winter?) and where it belongs in the canon, but you know it’s his. Like Vivaldi, Walsh has only one theme, but it is one hell of a theme. And when actor Cillian Murphy is the player, as he is in Walsh’s Misterman at St. Ann’s Warehouse, it’s a genius of a theme – the endless, distorted recital of a horrifying personal narrative.

This supposition, the one themed playwright, wouldn’t be unfamiliar to the artist himself if he were confronted with it, at least in terms of Misterman. The dramatist declared the monologue to be “a play that’s had a massive effect on everything I’ve written since 1998″ recently at the Galway Arts Festival where this rebirth of Misterman began. Re-narrative – it is the theme of The Electric Ballroom, The Walworth Farce, and most recently Penelope, to increasing success with each endeavor.

Cillian Murphy is reprising his role from the Galway Theatre Festival, a Landmark Productions and part of Imagine Ireland, and he brings the necessary star power to keep the tortured young man, eternally rehashing the slights and the not so slights from his fellow townspeople of Inishfree (with obvious reference to the W.B. Yeats’ poem of the same name,) from getting lost in the cavernous set of St. Ann’s Warehouse. St. Ann’s, which has been quite nurturing to the Irish dramatist, having brought many of Walsh’s plays to New York to the great delight of the New York Times among others, doesn’t do Misterman a great service here with a set by Jamie Vartan. Extending far beyond the usual set space, the stage stands in for a real warehouse, the abandoned, not the saintly kind, where Thomas is apparently hiding. The set is seemingly a metaphor for Thomas’ mind: rattlingly large and full of junk – some of that clutter quite malicious under superficial guises of religiosity. But this large, complicated set unfortunately severs a connection between character and audience, in a literary way and in a literal manner – sometimes Murphy seemed so far away that he might as well have been in Manhattan.

In the familiar image of a misfit, teased and possibly abused, “the only kitten in a town full of dogs,” Murphy works exceptionally hard to set this story apart from the rest. He races around the large stage, using an elaborate system of tapes and reel-to-reels to kickstart his stories, going so far as to recreate a rainstorm so he can then strip down to his shorts and don a dry suit, much to the delight, I’m sure, of those who came to see the movie star.
Murphy makes this role his own to such an extent that he finds material that is not even there. Not a joke (there are many, this is Enda Walsh after all) goes un-upended, not a cheesecake goes unmolested under the team work of star and playwright/director. I wonder: if the play featured a young man whose eyes weren’t piercing blue, if there weren’t so many bells and whistles in the fantastic sound design by Gregory Clarke, would it still hold up? This is speculation. Cillian Murphy is the Thomas without a doubt. Misterman runs until December 22.

Originally appeared in Diddlyi Magazine (with spelling corrected! Apologies!)

An Interview with Dr. Molly Ferguson on Martin McDonagh and his Ireland.

2011-12-08T09:48:00.000-08:00

I know I owe you the Misterman review from opening night, but I'd like to interrupt this regularly scheduled programming to bring you this terrific interview with Molly Ferguson, the new Professor of English and Women's Studies at Lindsey Wilson College. Molly and I share a love for Irish drama in general and Conor McPherson in the particular.

Dr. Ferguson is an Assistant Professor of English and Women's Studies at Lindsey Wilson College. She completed her PhD in English in May 2010 at the University of Connecticut, with a dissertation about ghost stories in contemporary Irish literature. She has published an essay on Roddy Doyle's short stories in The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, and has a forthcoming essay on Nuala NiDhomhnaill in Women's Studies: An Inter-Disciplinary Journal. Her ongoing interests include postcolonial literature/theory, gender, trauma and humor in Irish and world literature.
Here are some of the thoughts Molly generously offered during her exam time too!

What generated your interest in Irish drama?

In 1998 I was studying abroad in Galway when I was offered free tickets to a showing of Conor McPherson's "This Lime Tree Bower". It was a stunning monologue-driven performance. When I returned to the States I saw "The Weir" in New York City off-Broadway, and that play was even more compelling and emotionally charged. After that, I sought to read plays by McPherson, Martin McDonagh, and Marina Carr, and became enthralled with the work contemporary dramatists were doing. My dissertation in graduate school emerged from the contrast I perceived between the abundance of the Celtic Tiger era and the dark work of Ireland's dramatists at the time.

Speaking of Martin McDonagh, so much of Irish drama takes place in the West of Ireland. Why do you think this is?

The West has been a source of imagination and mythology that has been foundational for the work of seminal authors like W.B. Yeats and John Millington Synge, who have influenced later generations of artists. One reason for this is that the rural West has retained a distinctive cultural identity, partially due to the presence of Gaeltachts (Irish-speaking enclaves). The region has produced complex responses by artists. Synge viewed the West as haunting, yet primitive on his visit to the Aran Islands, and Joyce's character Gretta in "The Dead" is representative of a peasant woman in touch with an elemental Irish identity. A potentially negative outcome has been a tendency to fix the West as an unchanged pastoral landscape, a view that has been exploded by recent artists.

McDonagh is described as one of the most skilled and brilliant creators of theatrical pot-boilers”and the Leenane trilogy “undoubtedly one of the great events of the contemporary Irish theatre." Do you think this is warranted?

I think the Leenane trilogy tapped into a strong desire to deconstruct the mythology of the West, as well as to take stock of Irish identity in a time of rapid change. It was the right set of plays at the right time, because it managed to thoroughly entertain audiences both within and outside of Ireland, while voicing the kinds of questions circulating Ireland about progress, urbanization and secularization. McDonagh's mastery of black comedy is tremendous, and he manages to create pathos in plays in which none of the characters are particularly sympathetic. McDonagh establishes the presence of death as a part of everyday life in rural Ireland and the hopelessness of the characters who feel left out of the economic party of the Celtic Tiger. I see much of that feeling folded into his film work, as well.

What, if any, macabre innovation do you see in McDonagh's work?

The Pillowman - On one hand, the play incorporates folk tradition, storytelling, and fairy tales as might be expected of an Irish playwright, yet McDonagh's play is horrifying, frightening and absurd in its depiction of child abuse and state terror mechanisms. This makes the play disturbingly modern and displaces it from the Ireland of the Leenane plays into a state that could exist anywhere in the global world. The title character, the goofy bogeyman made entirely out of pink pillows who comes to little children to convince them to commit suicide to avoid the horrible lives they are destined for, embodies both the soft comfort and smothering capabilities of the pillow. Every time an audience member might feel like he/she is watching something recognizable, the playwright includes a twist that radically challenges tradition, like re-writing the "Pied Piper" tale to make the Piper a child-murderer or staging a child's re-enactment of a crucifixion.

The Pillowman, my favorite of McDonagh's plays, is certainly cruel (and I wonder what that says about me). Do you think his plays in general reached a new level of violence?

I wouldn't say that McDonagh's plays are more cruel or violent than previous Irish drama, but the intentionality behind the violence in a McDonagh play is what makes it "a new level," as you stated. In his drama, the people who commit violence are often sadistic and ferocious in their motivations behind the violence, and the type of violence depicted is more horrifying. I'm thinking, for example, of the vast difference between Sean O'Casey's political violence (gunshots and death scenes) in The Plough and the Stars compared to a little girl re-enacting Jesus' crucifixion, dumb-show style, in The Pillowman. McDonagh ups the ante emotionally every chance he gets, by depicting violence that is deeply disturbing to our sense of justice. Even more significant is that violent acts in his plays are often absurd, lending a smirk of irreverent humor to the acts themselves. (I haven't read or seen A Behanding in Spokane, but I imagine it contains that irreverance.) So a straightforward killing or wounding onstage in another Irish play may be considered plot-driven, but McDonagh's violence can seem gratuitous for some audiences because he's laughing about it.

There's been plenty of academic discussion about the debt McDonagh owes to Synge. What do you think?
I definitely agree that both Synge's and McDonagh's characters undermine and even subvert the "noble peasant" trope. This subversion has gotten both of them in trouble - much of the anger behind the Playboy riots, for example, was over a rural girl like Pegeen going outside the expected role and seeking sexual fulfillment by "besporting" with Christy. Interestingly, it's Synge's women who often lead the way in rejecting "noble peasant" status, like Pegeen, the Widow Quin and Nora Burke in In the Shadow of the Glen. Critiques of McDonagh's subversion of the rural Irish stereotype has seemed to originate in his not being considered "Irish enough" to manipulate those recognizable cultural figures. (Kind of the mentality that "I can make fun of my brother, but you'd better not!") At the time of the Leenane trilogy, the stereotype had already been dispelled by other writers and it's more like a reference point for audiences that he can work from.

Thank you, Dr. Molly!

Last Round for Kid Shamrock

2011-12-03T09:11:00.000-08:00

Some day I'll have to tell you the story of visiting Bert Sugar in his office....a table at a midtown Manhattan bar...but till then, reminding you that Kid Shamrock closes tomorrw will have to do. Here is more info from the press release:

KID SHAMROCK returns with an exclusive run of 10 performances at the TADA Theater from Friday, November 25 to Sunday, December 4. The two Sunday performances will be matinees performed at 3:00 P. M. The heart-wrenching and inspiring true story of middleweight contender "Irish" Bobby Cassidy will be directed by former WBO heavyweight champion of the world, Michael Bentt.
"KID SHAMROCK rocks, rolls and provides a raw slice of what we think it is to be a fighter," said Bentt. "A fighter intuits that after every congratulatory pat on the back, (literal or metaphorical) a shot, or a punch delivered from the blind side awaits. It's the nature of the game and the nature of life; It takes maniacal and monumental courage to endure and get up every morning, which is why the storytelling in KID SHAMROCK is truly transcending."
Examining the depths of a fighter's soul and celebrating the proud tradition of the sweet science, KID SHAMROCK provides a rare glimpse into the mindset of the fighter. And providing that glimpse are fighters themselves. The cast is replete with former boxers, including John Duddy, Seamus McDonagh, Wayne Kelly, Mark McPherson and Cassidy himself.

The production is very pleased to announce that among the new cast members is former two-time world welterweight champion and Olympic gold medalist Mark Breland. No stranger to acting, Mark has numerous credits, including Lords of Discipline, Summer of Sam, and He Got Game.

"These fighters have shown a tremendous amount of heart inside the ring," said executive producer David Schuster. "Guess what? They display the same heart and courage on the stage. The fighters, the actors, they lay it on the line every night."

The cast is anchored by veteran actor Vinny Vella (The Sopranos, Casino), the show-stealing Patrick Joseph Connolly and the explosive Nick Roman.

Each performance provides a message of perseverance and hope. As such, the cast and crew of KID SHAMROCK would like to extend a sincere thank you to Maxim Group LLC for sponsoring an evening in which tickets will be given away exclusively to teenage fighters from boxing gyms in the New York area. We applaud Maxim Group's desire to expose young men and women to such important life lessons played out on the stage.

The TADA Theater is located at 15 West 28th Street, between Broadway and Fifth Avenue, Manhattan.

The theater is handicapped accessible.

Tickets: $40.

For tickets online: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/208529.

For tickets by phone call: 1-800-838-3006 in the U.S, in the UK call 0800 411 8881, in Europe and the rest of the world call +44 122 444 3375.

For more information: Kidshamrockplay@gmail.com or call Gary D. Morgan 646-772-8704.

Done in by the Dane - Pan Pan in NYC

2011-12-03T07:58:00.000-08:00

I haven't had a chance to update this blog, I've been so busy actually doing rather than brooding.

Here is a review (a pan?) of Pan Pan from their November production at Skirball. The article originally appeared in Diddlyi Magazine

The twitter version? Flashes of brilliance but not enough. Beckett as a crutch rather than a lens.

That's even shorter than twitter - witter?

Beckett Ad Majorem And Other Ways 2011 Ends With a Bang and Not a Whimper.

2011-11-27T19:17:00.000-08:00

Does 2011 end then with the cruelest month? There is so much happening in NYC this December that a theatre lover couldn't possibly get to see all of what is offered.

Consider:

BAM is Beckett Ad Majorem soon with John Hurt appearing in the Gate Theatre's Krapp's Last Tape Dec. 6-18.

Cillian Murphy (above), subject of a profile in today's NYTimes, is warming up for his return engagement to Enda Walsh's Misterman, a big success at the Galway Theatre Festival and now to open at St. Ann's. It's the Cork native's American stage debut. Will I see you there on Sunday's opening night?!

As previously reported here, Gabrield Bryne begins directing James X over at 45 Bleecker, Dec. 6-18, a Culture Project in conjunction with Imagine Ireland.

Over at the Irish Rep, Dancing at Lughnasa has been extended until January 15th.

Not content with a cool 'hood in Brooklyn, Enda Walsh set up a spot in the East Village as well. He has written the book for Once, a musical based upon the little movie that could, now at the New York Theatre Workshop.

We could also catch C. S. Lewis in Freud's Last Session and his best known work in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe as a children's play at the St. Luke's and then there truly would be visions of sugarplums dancing in our heads.

God bless us, everyone.

The Dance Theatre of Ireland - Run to the Joyce with a Cadence to Your Step

2011-11-19T16:41:00.000-08:00

If you're in town, (I, unfortunately, am not this beautiful autumn weekend), I hope you're catching the quick stopover by the Dance Theatre of Ireland at the Joyce as part of the collaboration with New York's Stepping Group - Soul Steps.

The production is part of Imagine Ireland, Culture Ireland's year long season of Irish Arts in America. Every Little Step...the Rhythm of Hope is a collaboration between New York Stepping group Soul Steps, combining African-American Stepping, Irish and urban rhythms, modern dance and storytelling. The collaboration came about through the American Embassy in Ireland who also brought Soul Steps to Ireland to perform at the commemoration of the 10th anniversary of September 11th in September 2011: this production is therefore very much a synthesis of New York and Ireland, of dance, theatre and body percussion.

Would love to hear how the production went - let us know!

Gabriel Byrne Steps Off Stage and Directs Gerard Mannix's James X

2011-11-18T18:16:00.000-08:00

As was reported widely in the theatre world yesterday, Gabriel Byrne will direct and produce the acclaimed James X, a critically acclaimed one-man play about institutional abuse of children in Ireland, written and performed by Gerard Mannix Flynn. Also producing will be Liam Neeson and the Culture Project, a New York-based performance organization with a mission of human rights issues.

Gerard Flynn is a city councillor in Dublin but will spend a bit in the West Village at the 45 Bleecker Theater. Don't pay attention to those dire ads on the theatre website; I have no doubt that Gerard, Gabriel, and Liam are making this happen.

Performances begin on December 6 with an opening of December 9 for a 12 day run. More info. here.

A Portrait of a Dancer as a Young Man

2011-10-28T11:27:00.000-07:00

I don’t usually do Irish dance reviews. I have no qualifications to do so except that a long time ago I drove my five children to the Siobhan Moore School of Irish Dance twice a week for five years. However, the minute that Colin Dunne came out on the Baryshnikov Arts Center stage, casually dressed in a tee and jeans, feet bare and moving deliberately in silence, I knew I must write something about this dance. A review? Perhaps not. More a simple reaction to a piece of dance theatre that completely moved me.

Out of Time, created and choreographed by Dunne and directed by Sinéad Rushe, is not so much dance as a deconstruction of dance, of Irish dance both in general and in the particular. The dance piece playfully examines Irish dance in the context of history and again in the context of a singular experience: Dunne’s early success as a nine year old world champion and his later triumph making the global juggernaut that was Riverdance his own.

Dunne’s first full-length solo show, Out of Time, premiered at Glór Irish Music Centre in January 2008. Since then, the show has been intermittently on tour, most recently in Sarasota Florida, but it’s hard to imagine the show anywhere else but at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York City. The space is so perfect both for the dancer and the audience, tandem seats notwithstanding. It is an intimate space, expedient for the dancer, but then again, what else can we expect from Misha’s Place? The only prop on stage is a white box that can be taken apart, resembling the art form itself within the progress of the evening.

Out of Time is a multi-disciplinary work of dance, text, sound technology and archival film footage shown on that hinged box. The beginning of the evening finds Dunne on top of the box joking with the audience at the concept of the hornpipe. He is dancing on the shoulders of laughing giants – giants, known and unknown, of Irish dance.

One film referred to as the King of Spade in the playbill, presents three men performing a hornpipe with the provocative name of ”The Rights of Man.” In full recognition of both the debt owed and the boundaries to be resisted, Dunne attempts to dance along to the footage. He succeeds and then breaks away, moving his whole body, arms loose, back swayed, neck rolling side to side.

Stripping the layers away, Dunne continually asks questions, spoken and through dance: Is Irish dance dance when the feet are bare? Is Irish dance dance when there is no sound? Feet gnarled from time, face worn by time – the dancer seizes the moment before he runs out of time. With humor, Dunne teases the concept of aging – nothing Irish about that. We all get older.

In one of the most poignant moments of the show, Dunne, hard shoes on, plays with the music, seemingly chasing his own steps, always with a sense of joy like a clown in shadow play, but soon you realize that there is something more than play with the urgent movements. The dancer is chasing an ideal. Perfect scores may be awarded. There is a victor, but there is not true perfection. We are only human. We will be out of time.

Out of Time might not be my usual seat in the theatre, but it was as joyful and dramatic as anything I’ve seen. The piece ends its limited run at the Baryshnikov Arts Center on October 22 but will continue the tour to Los Angeles and Canada.

Originally published, front page mind you! in Diddlyi Magazine

Oscar Wilde’s Salome: Dancing For The Stars...And The Moon.

2011-10-19T12:08:00.000-07:00

The Femme Fatale Theatre bills their current production of Salome, the ancient story of Herod’s beloved stepdaughter/niece trading her Dance of the Seven Veils for the head of John the Baptist, as an irreverent and erotic new production of Oscar Wilde’s difficult work, but the play, as presented here with an all male cast is neither irreverent nor erotic, and that is not a denouncement. Salome comes across as it should – a cautionary tale of what happens when people resist everything but temptation.

The problematic drama was written by Wilde in 1891 in French, well before Wilde’s ascendency to London’s theatrical heights with his two 1895 hits, An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest, the latter having enjoyed some successful gender play recently in the Tony-winning run with Brian Bedford’s turn at Lady Bracknell at the Roundabout here in New York. If Bedford’s success at reviving an overly familiar character like Bracknell proves anything in reviving a Wilde play, it proves that gender has very little to do with anything. Why not have Salome (Davi Santos) be a beautiful boy who can do a split? Heads will still roll.
The Brooklyn-based Femme Fatale made the long trip north to Long Island City’s Secret Theater to take on this challenging task of making human some of Wilde’s biblical characters. It’s a questionable ambition to stage a play that even Wilde wasn’t wild about. His lover and ultimate nemesis, Lord Alfred Douglas, undertook the translation from French to English with dubious results; Wilde was “unhappy with both the translation and the illustrations (Aubrey Beardsley, above) – the former being so poor, and the latter wickedly fraught with family resemblance,” according to scholar Anne Margaret Daniel.

So why try? Well, because of those flashes of brilliance in this rarely produced play. What seems as annoyingly endless discussions about the moon and that sombre aspect to the Tetrarch’s countenance herald the repetitions of Samuel Beckett’s tramps. Even Oscar’s composing Salome in French is a precursor to Beckett forsaking Ireland and English for France and French. In the wrong acting hands, a lot of talk about a pale moon can be tiresome, but here, in this production, foreshadowing echoes of Beckett’s Gogo and Didi terminally waiting for Mr. Godot, are comically evoked by actors Danny Baird, Ian Schulz and Frankie LaPace as the long-suffering soldiers and page.

Some scenes, as directed by Robert Ribar, are played for the ready laugh rather than the Wilde wit: the campy pseudo aide de camp to Herod (Francisco Huergo) and the many Jewish stereotypes (Nick Moore) were less effective than moments when the players let the Wildean characters speak for themselves. Upon witnessing a suicide’s body, Herod ponders: “That seems strange to me. I had thought it was but the Roman philosophers that slew themselves.”

And speaking of poor Herod (Daniel DeStefano). He is the production’s object of ridicule. Why wouldn’t the King of Judea have tailored pants? Herod (you want to say “poor Herod” but then you remember the Holy Innocents, and you decide the man deserves what’s coming) and his ill-fitting wardrobe and odd head wear set him up for a buffoon: he reminds you of a modern day sitcom father, ignoring the purple velvet majesty and the beating wings of death, of course. But Mr. DeStefano suffers such ignominy well. He balances well the severity of his bride, Herodias, in a wonderful performance by John C. Hume. Forget Salome’s dance, it’s hard to take your eyes away from Mr. Hume’s weary rationalism.

The cause of all the consternation, the prophet Jokanaan, is played by Eugene Michael Santiago whose bodybuilder physique stands in contrast to the “white as the lily field body” of the text’s Iokanaan. Mr. Santiago’s Medusa hair is hardly the black curls that Salome falls in love with. But then again, love is blinded. And then beheaded.

Originally published on Diddlyi Magazine.

1st Irish 2011: And the winners were.....

2011-10-04T09:48:00.000-07:00

One of the benefits of having such a poor memory is the delight I experienced at the awarding of prizes last night. Congratulations to all the nominees and to George Heslin for all his organizational efforts in this year's theatre festival. It was the strongest field of productions so far.

Of note - the happiness and humility with which Darren Healy received his Best Actor prize in the talented field that included Aidan Redmond and Steve Blount. "Take that, Colin Farrell," he told me later. Apparently, Mr. Farrell had stolen an IFTA from Darren a couple of years prior. Darren is on his way back to Ireland for now but with renewed enthusiasm for returning to work in the U.S. His exultation is a reminder of why this festival is a necessary date on the cultural calendar.

That and the opportunity to have a glimpse of Mr. Gabriel Byrne.

Enough from me. Here is Beck Lee's press release.

1st IRISH 2011 HANDS OUT TOP JURY PRIZES

“BOGBOY” STANDS TALL WITH THREE AWARDS, “A NIGHT WITH GEORGE” WINS BEST PLAY

“DUBLIN BY LAMPLIGHT” PICKS UP BEST ENSEMBLE AWARD, “CIRQUE DE LEGUME” GETS JURY PRIZE, IN CEREMONY AT PAPILLON BISTRO & BAR

Deirdre Kinahan’s “Bogboy” won three major awards, including best production, at the closing ceremonies of the fourth annual 1st Irish Festival, on Monday October 3, at Papillon Bistro & Bar, 22 East 54th Street. The haunting drama about a heroin addict’s unlikely friendship with a reclusive farmer also scored for Sorcha Fox who won best actress and Jo Mangan who was named best director. But it was “A Night with George,” a comedy from Belfast, that proved to be the audience darling, snapping up the award for Best Play in online voting. The award for Best Play was presented by the actor Gabriel Byrne, Ireland’s cultural ambassador.

1st Irish 2011, the first and only festival in the world dedicated to Irish playwrights, presented the work of 18 contemporary Irish playwrights, of which eight had full productions in-competition. Of the eight, four were from America and four were from Ireland, with six American premieres and one New York premiere. New York’s Origin Theatre Company (George C. Heslin artistic director) hosts and coordinates 1st Irish, which began on September 5 and took place at venues across the city.

Darren Healy, who starred in the American premiere of “Noah and the Tower Flower,” which came to New York courtesy of Fishamble based in Dublin, won the award for Best Actor. The award for top production design went to the designers of Mabou Mine’s “Lucia’s Chapter’s of Coming Forth by Day” – Jim Clayburgh (set), Julie Archer (projections) and Carter Burwell (music).

The festival’s jury of five notable writers and theatre professionals added a new category this year, Best Ensemble, to recognize the achievements of the cast of “Dublin by Lamplight.” The commedia del arte-inspired vaudeville concoction came to New York from Inis Nua Theatre in Philadelphia. The Special Jury Prize for a unique contribution to the Festival went to “Cirque de Légume,” the vegetable circus from Sligo.

Edged out of the winner’s circle was the Mint Theater’s highly acclaimed “Temporal Powers,” which had the most nominations of any show in the festival, but which must console itself with a two-week extension that runs through next Sunday.

Each of the four productions from Ireland – all part of Imagine Ireland, Culture Ireland’s year of Irish arts in America – tasted victory. “I’m absolutely thrilled the overseas companies have benefited so much from both performing and networking at 1st Irish,” said George C. Heslin, artistic director of the New York-based Origin Theatre Company, which produces the festival. “This year is yet another amazing example of how the Festival continues to be a gateway to North America for contemporary Irish playwrights.” (Best Play winner “A Night with George” is from Brassneck Theatre Co. in West Belfast, and the Best Production winner, chosen by the jury -- “Bogboy” -- comes from Tall Tales of Navan).

The list of nominees is as follows: Best actress – Ruth Maleczech (“Lucia’s Chapters”); Sorcha Fox (“Bogboy”); Donna O’Connor (“A Night With George”). Best actor – Steve Blount (“Bogboy”), Aidan Redmond (“Temporal Powers”); Darren Healy (“Noah and the Tower Flower”). Best Director – Jo Mangan (“Bogboy”); Jim Culleton (“Noah and the Tower Flower”); Jonathan Bank (“Temporal Powers”). Best Design – “Temporal Powers;” “Lucia’s Chapters of Coming Forth by Day;” “Dublin by Lamplight.” Best production – “Temporal Powers;” “Bogboy;” “Noah and the Tower Flower.”

Serving on the 1st Irish 2011 jury were Jacqueline Davis, the executive director of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts; Playbill’s Harry Haun; film and theatre critic and historian Bernard Carragher; the Irish theatre columnist Kate Kennon, and Sean Noonan, an executive at Mutual of America, where he serves as liaison to New York’s professional theatre. The Awards Ceremony was coordinated by Ciaran Grant.

This year 1st Irish welcomed it newest title sponsor, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, which joins these other vital festival sponsors: the Irish Government, Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht; the Northern Ireland Bureau; the Irish Consulate NY; Tourism Ireland; the Irish Arts Council - An Chomhairle Ealaíon; Imagine Ireland, Culture Ireland’s year of Irish arts in America; the American Ireland Fund; Mutual of America; The Irish Examiner; McVicker & Higginbotham; NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, and the NY State Council for the Arts.

For festival information and to learn more about the productions, visit http://www.1stirish.org/

George Clooney vs. the Clowns

2011-10-01T11:14:00.000-07:00

You have to check out the close voting race for the 1st Irish 2011 Fan Favorite Play. Last I checked, a few moments ago, A Night With George is virtually tied with the circus romp Cirque de Legume. An interesting horse race, be sure to vote if you have an opinion. And who doesn't have an opinion about George Clooney and/or clowns. Www.1stirish.org

vs.

1st Irish 2011 - About a Girl

2011-09-29T09:43:00.000-07:00

This weekend marks the closing of 1st Irish 2011 - the world's only theatre festival devoted to Irish playwrights. It was a festival marked by distinctive themes this year: vodka, heroin, Biblical names, and above all, strong, flawed Irish women: Natalie, the Tower Flower (Mary Murray), Bridie Murphy and her night with George Clooney (Donna O'Connor), Min Powers and her problems with money (Rosie Benton), Nancy Trotter's sharp knives, Paula Nance's two characters in Reflections, and poor Lucia Joyce (the inestimable Ruth Maleczech in the performance of the year). Even the play called Bogboy wasn't about a boy. It proved to be a showcase for the acting talents of a scorching Sorcha Fox.

Drumroll.....The nominations have arrived.

1st IRISH 2011 ANNOUNCES NOMINATIONS FOR TOP JURY PRIZES

FESTIVAL CONCLUDES OCTOBER 3 WITH AWARDS CEREMONY AT PAPILLON BISTRO & BAR

8 PLAYS IN COMPETITION VYING FOR AWARDS IN 7 CATEGORIES

Nominations for the top awards of 1st Irish 2011 are being announced today as five of the eight plays in competition wrap up month-long runs on Sunday. The fourth annual edition of 1st Irish, the first and only festival in the world dedicated to Irish playwrights, concludes on Monday October 3 at 7pm, with an Awards Ceremony hosted by Papillon Bistro & Bar, 22 East 54th Street.

Acting, directing, and production design awards, and a special jury prize, will be handed out by the festival’s jury, a panel of five distinguished writers and theatre professionals. The festival’s audience members are choosing the Best Play, in online voting on http://www.1stirish.org/ that goes on through Sunday.

Coordinated by the New York-based Origin Theatre Company, the festival features four productions from Ireland and four from America, with six American premieres and one New York premiere. Two of the eight full productions – “Bogboy” at the Irish Arts Centre and “Lucia’s Chapters of Coming Forth by Day” from Mabou Mines – have already ended their runs. The Mint’s hit production “Temporal Powers” has been extended to October 9.
The list of nominees is as follows: Best actress – Ruth Maleczech (“Lucia’s Chapters”); Sorcha Fox (“Bogboy”); Donna O’Connor (“A Night With George”). Best actor – Steve Blount (“Bogboy”), Aidan Redmond (“Temporal Powers”); Darren Healy (“Noah and the Tower Flower”). Best Director – Jo Mangan (“Bogboy”); Jim Culleton (“Noah and the Tower Flower”); Jonathan Bank (“Temporal Powers”). Best Design – “Temporal Powers;” “Lucia’s Chapters of Coming Forth by Day;” “Dublin by Lamplight.” Best production – “Temporal Powers;” “Bogboy;” “Noah and the Tower Flower.” The winners of the Jury Prize and Best Play will be announced at the ceremony.

Serving on the 1st Irish 2011 jury are Jacqueline Davis, the executive director of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts; Playbill’s Harry Haun; film and theatre critic and historian Bernard Carragher; the Irish theatre columnist Kate Kennon, and Sean Noonan, an executive at Mutual of America, where he serves as liaison to New York’s professional theatre. The Awards Ceremony is coordinated by Ciaran Grant.

Among the 18 Irish and American theatres and arts organizations which presented or produced events at the festival this year are the prominent local non-profits 59E59 Theaters; The Mint; The Irish Arts Centre; PS 122; the NY Public Library at Lincoln Center; NYU’s Glucksman Ireland House; the American Irish Historical Society, and the New York Irish Center in Queens. The four American premieres from Ireland (“Noah…” from Fishamble in Dublin, “A Night with George” from Brassneck Theatre Co. in West Belfast, “Cirque de Légume” from Sligo, and “Bogboy” from Tall Tales of Navan) are part of Imagine Ireland, Culture Ireland’s year of Irish arts in America.

This year 1st Irish welcomed it newest title sponsor, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, which joins these other vital festival sponsors: the Irish Government, Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht; the Arts Council of Northern Ireland; the Northern Ireland Bureau; the Irish Consulate NY; Tourism Ireland; the Irish Arts Council - An Chomhairle Ealaíon; Imagine Ireland, Culture Ireland’s year of Irish arts in America; the American Ireland Fund; Mutual of America; The Irish Examiner; McVicker & Higginbotham; NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, and the NY State Council for the Arts.

1st Irish, powered by Origin Theatre Company (artistic director George Heslin), began on September 5. For festival information and to learn how to vote for this year’s Audience Choice Award for Best Play, visit http://www.1stirish.org/

No Legumes Were Harmed in This Circus: How 'Bout That?

2011-09-23T12:46:00.000-07:00

And by legumes, I mean the narrow version of the term, a bean-like vegetable with pods and seeds and the like. You know, peas, beans etc. Now, if by legume, you understand the general vegetable, then yes, many veggies were hurt in the making of Cirque de Legume stage show: Lettuce, radish, peppers and a lone onion.

There is a good deal of comic charm to the 50 minutes at 59 East 59th. The usher was laughing, three weeks into the run, and that surely says something. It tells you more than I ever could, except I'll still try. Jaimie Carswell and Nancy Trotter Landry are two classically (?) trained clowns. They, along with Pablo Ibarluzea, are products of the Parisian and Prestigious Ecole Jacues Lecoq. The clown act, conceived in Sligo, won the Bewleys Theatre Award at the 2009 Dublin Fringe Festival where Jaime was nominated for Best Male Performer (ohhh, will he be nominated again as part of the 1st Irish?! Stay tuned.)

Sure, Cirque de Legume is funny, and the couple are very sweet together; their small, intimate gestures toward each (as long as it didn't include leeks) were endearing, and I like to laugh at the Spanish Riding Academy as much as the next person, but what about the accompanying anxiety?! The anxiety produced by clowns and carrots? The anxiety produced by clowns choking on carrots. Maybe that's just me.

p.s. Yesterday, 59 E. 59th just announced that they will hold a special 90-minute clown workshop with Mr. Carswell, free for members, $10 for non-members: Call Member E:Line: 212-753-5959 x 104 for more info.

Anyone for Tennis? Shaw Festival Announces 2012 Line-Up

2011-09-21T08:07:00.000-07:00

The Shaw Festival has announced their 2012 program. It includes one of my favorite Shaw plays - Misalliance - at least, it's my favorite Shaw play to feature a plane crash. The other Shaw offering is The Millionaress. Neither of these plays constitute a Shaw showstopper. For that, the Festival is seemingly turning to Noel Coward.

More info here:

The Shaw Festival’s 2012 season proudly features 11 productions presented on the Festival’s four Niagara-on-the-Lake stages, and includes a compelling contemporary musical, two productions by the Festival’s namesake, a newly discovered Githa Sowerby play and much, much more. Impressive too is the list of directors, several of whom are members of the Shaw’s renowned acting Ensemble. Now deep into finalizing the casting for this rich season, Ms. Maxwell commented: “I feel strongly that we are striding into our next half century full of energy, ideas and the means to initiate a whole new series of important theatrical conversations.”

Two Shaw Festival premieres and a Coward on the Festival Theatre stage

The Shaw Festival presents Ragtime, the celebrated Tony Award-winning adaptation of E.L. Doctorow’s ground-breaking novel. Directed by Artistic Director Jackie Maxwell, the Terrence McNally/Lynn Ahrens/Stephen Flaherty musical epic traces the roots of 20th century America through the complex stories of three very different families. “A fascinating and celebrated piece when it was first produced in Toronto in 1996, Ragtime’s themes and ideas are even more timely today and it is thrilling to be able to explore and re-present them here at The Shaw,” stated Ms. Maxwell.

Also making its Shaw Festival premiere is His Girl Friday by John Guare, a brilliant blending of the 1940 movie of the same name with its original source, The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur. This screwball comedy, served with a sharp dash of politics and corruption, will be directed by Ensemble member Jim Mezon, who last directed 2008’s An Inspector Calls. Sharing the Festival Theatre stage is the classic Noël Coward comedy Present Laughter. Last seen at The Shaw in 1990, this new production continues the Festival’s ongoing celebration of this brilliant playwright and will be directed by Ensemble member David Schurmann.

Works by Shaw, Bernstein, Sowerby, Ibsen, Rattigan and Inge presented in the intimacy of the Court House and Royal George Theatres

At the Court House Theatre, music returns to the lunchtime with Trouble in Tahiti, Leonard Bernstein’s one-act opera on love and longing in American 1950’s suburbia. Following his success directing the musical reading of Trouble in Tahiti in 2010, Ensemble member Jay Turvey makes his directorial debut at the Shaw Festival with this season’s jazzy lunchtime treat.

The Court House Theatre playbill will continue The Shaw’s exploration of the works of British playwright Githa Sowerby. Alisa Palmer returns to direct Sowerby’s never-performed 1914 play A Man and Some Women, a provocative story of a family driven apart by money. A Man and Some Women continues the successful archaeological programming that included The Shaw’s highly acclaimed 2004 production of Sowerby’s first full-length play Rutherford and Son and its 2008 production of The Stepmother. Also in the Court House Theatre, Ensemble member Blair Williams, director of The Shaw’s hit production The President, directs The Millionairess, Bernard Shaw’s madcap comedy centred on one of Shaw’s most glorious larger-than-life heroines Epifania Ognisanti di Parerga Fitzfassenden. A celebrated Shavian actor, The Millionairess marks Mr. Williams’ first directorial undertaking of a full-length Shaw play. The Shaw is also delighted to welcome back renowned actor and director Martha Henry. Ms. Henry will direct Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler. Ms. Henry last directed The Autumn Garden at The Shaw in 2005 and is thrilled to be bringing this classic Ibsen play to light in the Court House Theatre.

The season’s second Shaw offering, Misalliance, will be presented at the Royal George Theatre. After her directorial success with last season’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Associate Director Eda Holmes tackles Bernard Shaw’s comedy of the laws of sexual attraction and the difficulty of fitting them into marriage. Also at the Royal George Theatre, Kate Lynch returns to direct Terence Rattigan’s French Without Tears, a sexy comedic romp set in the south of France and one of Rattigan’s longest running hits on the London stage. Artistic Director Jackie Maxwell continues her rich relationship with the work of William Inge with the domestic drama Come Back Little Sheba. Ms. Maxwell previously directed other Inge works Picnic and Bus Stop at The Shaw in 2001 and 2005, respectively, to critical acclaim.

One of Canada's leading female playwrights continues new programming in the Studio Theatre

After a season of great success in the Studio Theatre with the staging of Topdog/Underdog and When the Rain Stops Falling, the focus shifts to a Canadian writer in 2012. Award-winning Quebec writer Carole Fréchette’s poignantly poetic Helen’s Necklace (Le Collier d'Hélène), translated and adapted by John Murrell, will be the next offering of contemporary Shavian work in the Studio.

The Shaw’s celebrated Reading Series returns next season. The series has been a great opportunity to explore provocative contemporary plays from all over the world. Past featured works included Suzan-Lori Parks’ Topdog/Underdog, Caryl Churchill’s Serious Money and the Jay Turvey/Paul Sportelli musical Maria Severa — all of which have eventually been presented as full length productions at The Shaw. Dates and details to be confirmed.

Occurring throughout the year, the Play Development Program continues its dedication to the development and production of new plays that can sit alongside those of Shaw, Chekhov and Coward, as well as new adaptations and translations that convey classic stories in a contemporary way. Currently in development are plays by Erin Shields, Michael Marc Bouchard, John Murrell and Brendan Gall.

2012 season ticket on-sale dates to note:

Visa Infinite Cardholders can purchase tickets before the general public: December 3rd, 2011 to December 16th, 2011

Online, fax, mail, by phone and in-person

Members’ Special Priority Booking Period: November 5, 2011 to December 2, 2011

Telephone, in-person, online, fax and mail orders will be accepted beginning November 5 according to level of Membership

General Public: January 9, 2012

Fax, mail and online beginning January 9

By phone and in-person beginning January 14

Money Changes Everything: The Mint's Temporal Powers

2011-09-20T09:14:00.000-07:00

Two plays down, six to go, and I was delighted to attend the Mint Theatre's production of Teresa Deevy's Temporal Powers so early in my 1st Irish festival going spree (early for me, no one else I realize). Temporal Powers is critically embraced as many of the Mint endeavors are, including being named New York Magazine's Stage Dive Weekend's Recommendation and landing on the coveted NYT critic's pick list.

It was great to see Aidan Redmond (Michael Donovan) and Rosie Benton (Min Donovan) back together (above) after doing last year's Deevy production of Wife to James Whelan and wonderful to see Wrenn Schmidt (Lizzie Brennan) again (see below with Eli James). She is a talented actress who makes the most of sometimes thankless roles (John B. Keane's melodramatic Sive) and makes the most of thankful roles as well (Cleopatra in Shaw's Caesar and ....)

The rest of the talented cast, directed by the ambitious Jonathan Bank, consists of Eli James (Moses Barron), Fiana Toibin (Daisy Barron), Con Horgan (Ned Cooney), Bairbre Dowling (Maggie Cooney), Paul Carlin (Jim Slattery), and Robertson Carricart (Father O'Brien). Set by Vicki Davis.

Temporal Powers is seemingly simple play (what to do with found money) that thwarts expectations at every turn. Especially poignant is the parallelism between the two couples: one broken by money or the lack thereof, the other couple perhaps to be broken, perhaps to be saved.

Temporal Powers has been extended until Oct. 9th. The year 2012 will see the third installment of the Mint's reconnaisance into Ireland's forgotten playwright with Katie Roche. Jonathan Bank has edited a collection of these three Deevy works into Teresa Deevy Reclaimed.

Quiet Please! Jury in Session. But First a Word on Bogboy.

2011-09-14T08:15:00.000-07:00

I won't be updating this blog much in the next few weeks because I will be judging this year's festival. Very flattered to be asked, of course.

I can say that the performances in Deirdre Kinahan's Bogboy at the Irish Arts Center were outstanding, but that is not tipping my hand as to my votes. Ms. Kinnehan's family was in attendance at the opening night festivities, including her brother - his first chance to see one of his sister's plays in production. It was quite a thrilling moment to witness.

I was a bit disappointed that none of the characters in Bogboy broke out into modern dance as they did in her entry into last year's festival, Hue & Cry, but not disappointed in Steve Blount and Sorcha Fox's impleccable timing. The stage design, stark black and white skies that cast shadows on the actors were beautiful, but the sound was a bit overdone. Bogboy has enough atmosphere through characterization, none needs to artificially envoked.

For more information on the 1st Irish 2011 Theatre Festival, please see this site. See you on Oct. 3 at the Awards Ceremony!

1st Irish 2011 Launch Party: A Night With George (Heslin)

2011-09-01T06:44:00.000-07:00

It was a beautiful post-Irene summer evening high up over Manhattan on the Mutual of America's 35th floor and an auspicious beginning to the 4th annual 1st Irish. There were welcomes by Consulate General Noel Kilkenny and actress Geraldine Hughes, leaving soon for the West End to reprise her role in the Tony-award winning Jerusalem.

And of course, there was an inspiring call to action by the incomparable George Heslin, mastermind behind the festival.

Tom Moran, CEO of Mutual of America and host of the party, wasn't in attendance - ironically he did appear in the day's New York Times' article re the refurbishment of 21 commenting on the state of that iconic bar.

Speaking of drinks, there was an exuberance last night for the festival's onset beyond the alcohol - friends' meeting sometimes for the first time since last year's festival's closure. Best story of the night belonged to A Night With George Donna O'Connor in absentia due to a visa snafu. Apparently an immigration official disputed her "O" status on her visa, thinking she better deserved a "P" for performer. "I haven't heard of you so how can you be an Outstanding Applicant?" Admission to the US denied. I suspect that Ms. O'Connor will get a lot of mileage out of that small-minded administrator. Look what she can do with a cardboard cutout!

See you at 1st Irish 2011!

Ist Irish 2011 Announces Line-Up

2011-08-12T11:12:00.000-07:00

1st Irish 2011 has just issued a press release on the upcoming festival:

1st IRISH 2011, NY’S ANNUAL FESTIVAL OF IRISH THEATRE RUNS FROM SEPTEMBER 5 TO OCTOBER 3

ARTISTS FROM HERE AND ABROAD PRESENT DIVERSE WORKS IN VENUES ACROSS THE CITY

The fourth annual edition of 1st Irish, New York’s only all-Irish theatre festival, runs from September 5 to October 3. Coordinated by the New York-based Origin Theatre Company (artistic director George C. Heslin), the month-long festival features plays by 16 contemporary Irish playwrights spanning a range theatrical genres and styles, with the collaboration of 18 theatres and arts organizations from here and abroad. Among the plays being presented are six American premieres and one New York premiere. 1st Irish 2011 concludes on Monday October 3 with an Awards Ceremony at which the festival’s jury will honor the outstanding performances and productions.

The American companies presenting work at the festival include:

Mabou Mines with the New York premiere of “Lucia’s Chapters Coming Forth by Day,” written and directed by Sharon Fogarty and starring Ruth Maleczech, September 14 to 25 at P.S. 122; The Mint’s production of the American premiere of “Temporal Powers” by Teresa Deevy (the festival’s only deceased playwright), now playing through September 25; Origin Theatre Co. with “Breaking Ground” -- 6 young writers present their ideas for new work in a rehearsal room setting -- an event that shows and tells, taking place on Saturday September 24, 3:15pm, at A.R.T. Studios at 520; the British National Theatre of America (Las Vegas) with the American premiere of “Reflections” at Stage Left Studio Theatre, September 15 to October 2; Tir Na Theatre Co. (Boston) with a reading of “Dawnhurst” at the American Irish Historical Society, Monday September 26 at 7pm; Inis Nua (Philadelphia) with the New York premiere of “Dublin by Lamplight” at 59E59 Theaters from September 8 to October 2; Queens Irish Center with a special screening of “Mickey Bo and Me,” a film inspired by the award-winning play “Mojo Mickey Bo” that premiered at 1st Irish in 2008 -- Friday September 16 at 8:15pm (excerpts from play will be seen before the screening).

The theatre companies bringing work to the festival from Ireland include:

Fishamble (Dublin) with “Noah and the Tower Flower” by Sean McLoughlin at 78th Street Theatre Lab -- September 7 to October 2; Tall Tales (Navan) with “Bogboy” by Deirdre Kinahan at the Irish Arts Center -- September 7 to 25; Cirque de Légume (County Sligo) with “Cirque de Légume” at 59E59 Theaters, September 6 to October 2; and Brassneck Theatre Company (West Belfast) with “A Night with George” at the Times Square Arts Center, September 5 to October 2. These four American premieres from Ireland are part of Imagine Ireland, Culture Ireland’s year of Irish arts in America.

This year's Panel Events:

“Challenge for the Actor,” a free interactive panel discussion, featuring actors in the festival, that opens a window onto the creative process of working on Irish plays. Thursday September 22 at 7pm at NYU’s Glucksman Ireland House, 1 Washington Mews (between West 8th Street and Washington Square N.). Free, reservations recommended, 212/998-3950.

Another panel event, at the NY Public Library for the Performing Arts in Lincoln Center, 40 Lincoln Center Plaza, focuses on the growth of a thriving theatre and cultural scene in Northern Ireland. Tuesday September 20, 6:30pm. First come, first served.

News from 1st Irish:

"The Prophet of Monto," seen last year in a production from Washington D.C.-based Irish theatre company Solas Nua, is being presented this year, at the end of November, at Axis: Ballymun in Dublin. Georganne Heller is producing this transfer.

Up-and-coming playwright Deirdre Kinahan of Tall Tales Co., who made her U.S. debut with the critically acclaimed “Hue & Cry” in last year’s festival, returns with "Bog Boy.” The highly anticipated production begins its run at The Irish Arts Center on September 7.

Mary Murray, who won the Festival’s Best Actress Award in 2009 for her role in the critically acclaimed “The Pride of Parnell Street,” returns to the Festival this year in another Fishamble production, “Noah and the Tower Flower” by Sean McLoughlin.

Festival Sponsors:

Funding support for 1st Irish 2011 is generously provided by the Festival Sponsors: the Irish Government, Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht; the Arts Council of Northern Ireland; the Northern Ireland Bureau; the Irish Consulate NY; Tourism Ireland; the Irish Arts Council - An Chomhairle Ealaíon; Imagine Ireland, Culture Ireland’s year of Irish arts in America; the American Ireland Fund; Mutual of America; The Irish Examiner; McVicker & Higginbotham; NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, and the NY State Council for the Arts.

Raise The Parting Glass to Ireland's Boom Years.

2011-07-31T18:54:00.000-07:00

Ray Yeates (Courtesy axis: Ballymun)

Memoir told through the travails of a favorite sports team is a common enough dramatic device…..in a bar. In the theatre? Not so much. It’s puzzling why personal sports stories aren’t a more familiar conceit on stage, especially in a one-man show. What better narrative structure than reeling off the years through the accomplishments of one’s beloved team? Dermot Bolger’s The Parting Glass features one Eoin, an ex-pat Irishman, who tells the story of his youth, emigration, marriage, and eventual return to Ireland all within the context of football. These stories are framed mostly within the confines of near-misses at sport and personal success: significant (and infamous) mileposts in Ireland’s soccer team history, culminating in the 2010 handball by France’s Thierry Henry to deny Ireland a chance at the World Cup Finals.

Article continues here in its original publication Diddlyi Magazine.

Eva is a Free Woman In Paris, But In Ireland?

2011-07-20T18:08:00.000-07:00

I'm sure it's just my skewed, myopic sense of things, but ever since I've returned from Paris, it seems the center of the universe tilted away from New York City toward the City of Light: Woody Allen is making movies about it, Forbes finds it tops for nation branding (whatever that is), and as I write this, hundreds of cyclists are crossing the Alps in an attempt to reach it.

In the Fallen Angels Theatre Company' production, Barbara Hammond's creation, Eve in her one-woman show, Eva the Chaste, is also on a journey toward Paris. She reaches it but has to return home to Ireland in order to really arrive in Paris. Hammond, a 2010 Edward Albee Fellow, and Aedín Moloney, the actress who inhabits Hammond's singular character, together bring us an unconventional heroine, Eva the Chaste, who is not so much and not about to apologize for it.

Ms. Maloney, who was so menacing as a woman prisoner in Paula Meehan's Cell, shows her full acting range here. Not menacing at all, she is a common woman with a common story, a poignant story but an everyday one - what to do with an aging parent.

Eva has a slight body, bowed a bit by life. It is dressed in vibrant colors that underline and contrast with the conventional story of escape from the dullness of a certain rigid Ireland. We meet Eva upon her arrival home to care for her dying mother. We hear a little bit about her childhood and her relationship with that mystifying person that was her mother and who is now something altogether different.

As directed by John Keating, perhaps an actor's director, being a fine actor himself, Eva the Chaste's best moments are the here and now of the story, Eva's struggle with the mortality of her mother (and then of course, her own mortality). The mother is infantilized by her age, and Ms. Maloney taps into the most universal of moments - the child becoming the parent - to a most poignant affect.

There are a couple of text problems within the play, a confusion as to the exact relationship between Eve and her mother, the issue of a "birth mother" is raised, and an unconvincing scenario where long gone Eva returns to temporarily care for her mother and takes a large decision upon herself, but overall, Eva the Chaste is both unique and common in all the best ways - a unique character struggling with a situation that will come to us all.

Eva the Chaste plays at The Clurman Theater until July 24th.

Some Originals at Origin

2011-07-06T18:38:00.000-07:00

One of the highlights of last year's 1st Irish Theatre Festival was Jo Kinsella's performance as Margaret Mary-Rose, the endearing and enduring radio personality, in Jimmy Kerr's Ardnaglass on the Air. It was a welcome gift then, when Jo handed me a cd recording of the production featuring Jimmy reprising his role as Hugh-Francis and Maureen Brehoney as Patsy, in the comic portrayal of an Irish rural community radio station, just as the above small print declares.

It was a little reunion of sorts for the 1st Irish Theatre Festival 2010 last night at the Origin Theatre's Benefit Showcase on Park Avenue. Although the 1st Irish and Origin are two separate entities, the boundaries do blur with George Heslin as the creative director of both and the 1st Irish serving as an enticement toward Origin's larger mission - as a vehicle for first run European Theatre here in the U. S.

Don Creedon offered a brief glimpse of his Audience Award-winning A Man Walked Into a Bar. It wasn't quite the same, not being on the second floor of Ryan's Daughter, the Upper East Side bar, but it was great to see Bill Rutkoski and Walter Michael DeForest who is currently appearing in another site specific work, The Lombardi Case 1975, murder mystery and street theatre on Mott and Prince.

It wasn't just about the past; there were peeks at the future as well: Don Creedon talked of a new farce he's working on that's in the reading stage now and featuring eight characters, and Paula Nance is delighted to bring the one-woman Reflections to the autumn's 1st Irish 2011. A lot of lovely chatter accompanied by the charismatic vocalist - Kevin Melendez. A charming evening all in all.

Ireland Can't Be Such a Bad Place if Australian Soap Operas Happen There...

2011-06-19T19:01:00.000-07:00

As much as I enjoyed Fintan O'Toole's talk at yesterday's Imagine Ireland event at the International Festival of Arts and Ideas, perhaps I needed some distance between his discussion of the current Irish State of Mind, and the evening's production of Druid's The Cripple of Inishmaan. O'Toole's words echoed throughout the evening and seeped into the very core of The Cripple, completely changing how I usually experience Martin McDonagh's dark comedies. I now see them through the lens of an Australian soap opera.

O'Toole admires McDonagh; he uses adjectives like "fantastic" and verbs like "love," but he also invites us, the audience, to keep in mind the playwright's diaspora viewpoint, a unique eye fed upon "bad television:

"Huge amounts of McDonagh's plotting is based upon bad television. This is a guy didn't go to university, left school when 16. Sat at home, and he's every parents' nightmare, sat at home watching Australian soap operas. "

Yesterday, Australian soap operas came between me and poor Cripple Billy.

This wasn't a criticism by O'Toole, just a little background on a playwright that O'Toole, the long time drama columnist at the Irish Times, calls a talent at "old-fashioned plotting, absolute brilliance, he is one of great kind of storytellers, there's nothing in it but that, whatsoever, good old-fashioned stagecraft, what happens on stage, people going on and offstage, the way a story is told, and it comes from watching an awful lot of soap operas."

With this in mind, the story became a little more calculated, Babbybobby's violence a little less shocking, and Billy's illness a little less poignant, but nothing could effect the sheer comedy of Johnnypateenmike. Not even the sudden appearance of a koala. Not that it happened, mind you. Sharks are a rare occurrence near Ireland as Bartley (Laurence Kinlan) points out, and koalas even more so. [If you would like to find out more about O'Toole (the man that Druid's Garry Hynes called the "smartest man in Ireland") and McDonagh, here is a link to O'Toole's interview with McDonagh from way back in 1998.]

The Druid's American tour of The Cripple is coming to end (today, I believe) with a stint at the Yale University Theatre as part of the Festival and Imagine Ireland. Coincidentally, I last saw The Cripple at the Atlantic Theatre in February 2009, at the end of that successful five month tour that travelled through Ireland and England and to Manhattan. The night I saw The Cripple, it never came to an end at all. Due to a set problem, the show was aborted, and the audience was offered refunds or tickets to another night, but because the show was closing within the week, I never did get to see it to its completion.

So two and half years later, I'm back to see the end, with a different Billy - Tadhg Murphy. (It will wasn't that much of a cliffhanger - I was privileged to see the 1998 American premier.) It's an indication of Mr. Murphy's usual frenetic Enda Walsh roles that he seemed understated as the crippled boy that schemes to leave the decidedly unromantic Aran Island. This Billy seems more a rorschach test rather than a tragic story unto himself. Each fellow Aran Islander is amplified through Billy, the individual tragedy/comedy intensified. Good hearted Bartley is kinder (and dumber) in front of Billy. Slippy Helen (the wonderful Clare Dunne) is a little crueler, and then there's BabbyBobby (Liam Carney), but I can't bear to talk about that.

The kind fake Auntie Eileen, one of two sisters who took Billy in as an infant, is the indefatigable Dearbhla Molloy who originated the role in 1996 at the Royal National Theatre in London. She and Laurence Kinlan (both below) were the two holdovers here from the 2008-9 production.

Auntie Kate, who has the unfortunate habit of talking to stones when stressed, is played by Ingrid Craigie. And what's the difference between talking to a stone and talking to yourself? I ask because I can see myself going down that one-sided road.

Dermot Crowley is Johnnypateenmike, marking a Druid debut, as does his stage mammy Nancy E. Carroll and the good doctor Paul Vincent O'Connor.

The Cripple will leave New Haven for the real Inishmaan - Inis Meáin of the Aran Islands - to finish their tour. An Aran Island theatre audience will watch Aran Island characters watch cinematic Aran Islanders - a decidedly meta moment. Fade to black.

ReJoyce! Bloomsday in Bryant Park

2011-06-17T17:48:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Culture Ireland and the Irish Arts Center welcomed the inaugural Bloomsday Breakfast in Bryant Park. It was a wonderful beginning to what I hope is an annual event, right down to the weather - dappled sunlight through the trees with a cool breeze occasionally lifting the long Edwardian skirts on the Darrah Carr dancers.

Music was by Songs of Joyce (as featured on the youtube video on the bottom of this post) and the readings were presented by Fionnula Flanagan, James Newman, Charlotte Moore, Terry George, Michael Noonan, Isaiah Sheffer (always the stalwart for Symphony Space's evening presentation of Bloomsday), and Aedin Moloney. The morning was curated by Belinda McKeon who looked lovely in her period costume. The food was plentiful and delicious. Will I attend next year? Yes, yes, I will, yes.

Here are some more pics from the day:

Dear Eloise: What about that crazy island and I did so love your son, Daniel Faraday.

Terry George, great director and even better writer.

Belinda McKeon, whose first novel has been recently published by Scribners, hawking someone else's book.

Here is Imagine Ireland's almost instantaneous youtube video. Next year, I aspire to appear full frame. Now, it's off to New Haven for Druid's appearance at the International Festival of Arts and Ideas.

Bloom in Bryant Park and the Cripple in Connecticut

2011-06-15T14:35:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow is Bloomsday as you well know, and Imagine Ireland is sponsoring a celebratory breakfast on the Upper Tier of Bryant Park, featuring music and readings by Fionnuala Flanagan and Terry George among illustrious others. Blooming attire suggested but not required. Perhaps I shall see you there! You'll be the one in the white suit, right?

Meanwhile, in New Haven, Druid's The Cripple of Inishmaan, fresh from the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, has landed as part of the International Festival of Arts and Ideas, running now til June 25th. As part of Imagine Ireland's campaign (it's everywhere!), there will a panel featuring Fintan O'Toole and a discussion on just what constitutes an Irish State of Mind as in: "how have Irish cultural traditions evolved and what do cultural commentators think about the Irish state of mind?" I'll have a listen and let you know.

Weekend Hits and Misses

2011-06-13T19:17:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Desmond Heeley on his Tony last night for the Set Design in The Importance of Being Earnest (which incidentally is closing a week early due to a couple of actors having conflicting schedule obligations.

After a little digging, I re-found this youtube video with Antoni Cimolino interviewing the designer on his sets for Earnest's Stratford incarnation. Watch the modest man work some magic with his "little creatures." Those of you who have seen the Roundabout Theatre version will recognize the manifestation of his early ideas in building the physical in this "dangerous play because everyone knows it." Nothing so dangerous, opines Brian Bedford, "The play could have been written for Desmond to design."

Another hit last night was the humor and self-depracation in Bono and The Edge's address to the Beacon Theatre Tony Award audience: "we used to be famous for being in U2."

Richard Perry/The New York Times

If you're interested in reading more about Spider-man's long awaited opening (and really, it is on topic here. It's theatre with an Irish interest, after all), there is an excellent interview in today's NYT with the Dublin duo here

Now for the misses: "The more serious you treat it, the funnier it gets" is how Mr. Heeley describes the successful, Tony-nominated approach to Earnest in its Stratford to Broadway journey. It's a philosophy that the Irish Rep might have benefited from in their production of The Shaughraun. I finally caught the Dion Boucicault play this past weekend with a little help from a friend. I'm glad I saw it for its historical import, but not glad for the theatrical experience.

There was minimal set design (speaking of which) in this maximum melodrama, and it might just be because it was all chewed to pieces by the end of its run. It's a misguided drama when the dastardly villain is the most understated character. With all the flailing arms and exaggerated asides to the audience, the wit, which is there under all that mustache twirling, is lost. It's a play that is not produced often, perhaps there's a reason for that in its outdatedness, but if it is to be produced, why do so to mock it? What else is the audience to do but mock it as well.

The Importance of Being Shaw in 1896: You Never Can Tell

2011-06-10T10:42:00.000-07:00

Judging from the T. Schreiber Studio’s production of George Bernard Shaw’s You Never Can Tell, I could never tell you why this play isn’t performed more frequently. The story of a successful author and matriarch, Mrs. Clandon, who brings her free-thinking, willful children back to England after 18 years of self-exile from her cantankerous husband is a comic achievement.

Yes, there is the occasional thankless role such as the unfortunate judge, Mr. Bohun (Edwin Sean Patterson) who swoops down at the end of the play to tidy up all the loose ends and mistaken identities (perhaps that isn’t quite so unfortunate, I can think of many plays that could use a stern judge to bring the dramatic action to a screeching halt). Mr. Bohun (pronounced without the h) is both boon and blessing, proving that Shaw wasn’t above a bad pun.

And yes, there is plenty of Shavian preachiness, but the preachiness comes with many spoonfuls of seaside comedy sugar in this play. When You Never Can Tell is as well-acted and staged as this one is, it deserves to be produced as often as Shaw’s other “pleasant” plays: Arms and the Man and Candida, the latter currently and pleasantly incarnated as the musical A Minister’s Wife at New York City’s Lincoln Center.

What is most striking about You Never Can Tell, humor aside, and there’s plenty of that in this comedy of marital strife and parental confusion, is just how much a reaction Shaw’s play is to Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest which is on its own successful Broadway run right now. You would think it was 1896 by the New York theatre scene at the moment: making the most of the 19th century while we can.

You wouldn’t have to know that Shaw wrote this play a year after Wilde’s pinnacle Earnest to discern the many jibes at the more famous play. Take young son Philip Clandon’s admonition to the dubious family solicitor, Mr. McComas (Randy Miles) bearing unwelcome news: “Mr. McComas, your conduct is heartless. Here you find a family enjoying the unspeakable peace and freedom of being orphans.” Being heartless was Shaw’s criticism of Earnest, and so he attempted to put some heart into Wilde’s story of orphans and rediscovered family members.

Never having the popularity of Shaw’s other plays, You Never Can Tell, directed by Robert Verlaque, is revived to considerable success especially in the hands of Philip (Seth James, above) and his sister Dolly (Noelle P. Wilson, above) The two characters (and actors) deserve their own epilogue as they spin wildly through the end of the 19th century.

The “long arm of coincidence,” as Philip describes the family situation, includes the thoroughly modern mother in Mrs. Clandon (Lucy Avery Brooke) and the erstwhile Mr. Crampton (the convincingly unlikeable Lawrence Cantor.)

Mr. Valentine, the suitor to Gloria Clandon (Jessica Osborne) is played by Lowell Byers who gamely plows through the many personality facets of the dentist who would love but not marry. Mr. Byers handles the Algernon Montcrief-like comedy easily and with charisma, but when he is at rest, his natural countenance is severe, the romantic hero persona doesn’t always sit comfortably.

“Really, if the lower orders don’t set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them?” said Wilde in Earnest. And what on earth is the use of Shaw’s Walter the Waiter if not to set a good example for the Clandons/Cramptons?

I suspect that plays at the TSS have lately been selected based upon whether there is a role for the terrific Peter Judd. Here he plays Walter, whom Dolly (and then everyone), calls William for his resemblance to a bust of William Shakespeare. The nickname is flattering, assuming that wit and wisdom will fall freely from his lips, but there is also a larger element of patronization. Careless people, even when they are funny and charming, are a cautionary tale whether told by Wilde or Shaw.

Remaining cast: Helen Abell (Parlor Maid), Townsend Ambrecht (Joe), Marilyn Mineo (cook), Kyle Storey (Kyle). Chris Minard (Set Design). You Can Never Tell runs through June 19. T. Schrieber.org

Originally published in Diddlyi Magazine

Irish Spring

2011-05-31T17:32:00.000-07:00

May is slipping fast into summer and the temps are near 90, but the spring shows are still around for a couple more weeks. It's hard to move quickly in this heat, but I recommend a

Lincoln Center's A Minister's Wife, a musical based upon Shaw's Candida, is only on stage for two more weeks. I'm playing hooky tomorrow and catching the matinee without a glimpse back.

Drew Gehling, Marc Kudisch, Liz Baltes

(photo by Paul Kolnik)

Also closing on June 12, the Irish Rep's The Shaughraun. I do believe that will be next week's escape.

Other shows for the Eirephile are G. B. Shaw's You Never Can Tell at the T. Schreiber Studios (more on that later in the week) and even Freud's Last Session - the stalwart play envisioning a lively discussion between Freud and Northern Ireland's C. S. Lewis. Freud's Last Session recently became the longest-running Off-Broadway production with its latest extension.

This clip is a bit one-sided with little of Lewis' eloquence on display, but we know that Lewis had the last laugh.

The Quiet Man at MoMA

2011-05-19T09:27:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow Gabriel Byrne goes on Lenny Lopate WNYC here in New York City to talk about the latest Imagine Ireland initiative taking place at MoMA: Ireland in Film with specifically The Quiet Man as its catalyst for conversation to the May 20- June 3 film exhibition.

Now The Quiet Man is not my favorite film. Nor is it Mr. Byrne's as I remember from a presentation of the iconic movie at an Irish Arts Center event some years ago, but I also remember an eloquent reasoning for the importance of the movie within a cinematic history context and a persuasive argument against getting too hung up on John Wayne's dragging Maureen O'Hara down the hill.

The MoMA exhibit has a varied catalogue of films ranging from the 1910 The Lad from Old Ireland with musical accompaniment to the 2008 Hunger starring the most recent Mr. Rochester, Michael Fassbender, as Bobby Sands. On Saturday, May 28th, the Hunger will be introduced by playwright Enda Walsh who will also participate in a post-film conversation with the very busy Gabriel Byrne whose own Into the West is part of the exhibit as well. Into the West: one of my favorite films although I do think that Papa Riley could have put a little more effort into that mouth to mouth resuscitation.

Bracknell Redux

2011-05-16T18:21:00.003-07:00

After checking out Broadway's Earnest a second time, I am delighted to report that the Roundabout's (and Stratford's) classic is still as fresh and funny as when I saw it in previews.

This time round, I sat in the second row, the better to see some weariness around the epigrams, but new cast in Jane Houdyshell (Miss Prism), Brian Murray (the Right Rev. Chasuble) and Jessie Austrian (Gwendolyn Fairfax) are keeping the production energetic and funny as in funny, funny, funny.

Our Jack Worthing and Algy are still knife-sharp as played by David Furr and Santino Fontana, pictured above, and then there's Brian Bedford, so beautifully human as the monster who's no myth, Lady Bracknell.

I completely agree with the NYT's Charles Isherwood in his opinion that Earnest "should win" the Tony for Best Revival. Sitting through Earnest again was living completely for pleasure.

And a Happy Birthday sing out to Brían O'Byrne who has made entertainment news lately for being a part of an American mashup of the UK archetypal Prime Suspect. Who knows how that will turn out without a Helen Mirren, but it's an ambitious and worthy project.

In the footsteps of Beckett, Joyce, and Python

2011-05-04T21:49:00.000-07:00

I'm off to Paris tomorrow to look around at some of the key literary features in that city with a few to spare. After a trip to Shakespeare and Co., I'll be looking for the Castle of Guy de Lombard.

A Wildean Remedy to the Windsor Wedding

2011-04-29T10:15:00.000-07:00

On today's date, the Easter Uprising of 1916 collapsed when the Irish nationalists yielded to the British military forces.

And on that note, stand strong now! Here is an antidote to all that ostentation on the telly.

The delightful (and parental cautionary) Jersey Shore "Gone Wilde" brought to you by Playbill.com! Check out all five videos in the event that you find yourself taking all this pageantry a little too seriously.

Happy Birthday, Seamus Heaney! By God, the Man Can Handle a Pen.

2011-04-13T08:44:00.000-07:00

This might not be the best graphic imagery to celebrate our Nobel-winning poet's birthday, but it is from some of his finest work - his translation of Antigone as produced by the Handcart Ensemble's 2006 production.

Artwork © Annie Poon

And for something a little more life affirming. By God, the man can handle a pen.

Digging

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; as snug as a gun.

Under my window a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade,
Just like his old man.

My grandfather could cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, digging down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mold, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.

- from Death of a Naturalist (1966)

I Survived the Northeast Modern Language Association Conference and All I Got...

2011-04-11T16:47:00.000-07:00

I survived the NeMLA and all I got was.... a better understanding of Conor McPherson's The Shining City, so I must say it was very successful endeavor even if I didn't have the right adaptor for my MacBook Pro and couldn't show any of my slides for Enda Walsh's Penelope. A presentation just isn't complete without a photo of Karl Shiels in his red speedo.

photo courtesy of St. Anne's Warehouse

My co-presenters on Saturday's panel, Transnational Ireland: The Celtic Tiger and Beyond, were all exceptional, but I'd like to first mention C. Austin Hill's paper on cluster analysis in The Shining City. Cluster analysis, as I have just learned, is a tool analyzing the occurrence of certain words and phrases, their sheer numbers and their not-so sheer meanings, to give a richer significance to the examined work. As Chris says: cluster analysis is a "particularly useful tool, allowing a text to be explored for both intentional and latent meanings in a playwright’s work."

A particularly useful tool indeed especially for a work like The Shining City because so much of the play is about what is left unsaid. More than usual weight then has to be given to the semiotic word to make sense of what isn't there on the page or what isn't spoken by the actor.

I still think of Oliver Platt's performance as John as being one of the best interpretations of McPherson's repetitions and silences that I've ever witnessed. Here he is with the incomparable Brían O'Byrne who played Ian.

photo Sara Krulwich - The New York Times

The Shining City is a play of "you knows..." and "yeah," and, as Chris Hill points out, "real", underlining the ironies inherent in a drama full of uncertainty, negation, and the intangible.

We had a spirited discussion after the panel - always a good sign - and I didn't get a chance to ask Chris what he thought was the significance of John's parting gift to Ian, the extravagant lamp. In re-reading the play for the panel, I was struck by the lamp much more than in the past. What does that lamp have to do with the final scene?!

If you're in the Niagara Frontier in the coming months, the gloriously steadfast Irish Classical Repertory Theatre will be featuring The Shining City for their spring season, April 28 to May 22. Even if you aren't in the area, it will be worth a trip.

Scene Five:

IAN: Yeah? Hello? Hello? Yeah, hold on. (He presses the buzzer to release the door) Hello? Are you in? Hello? What? Hello?

I'm in and cheers to Chris for doing this much-needed scholarship on McPherson.

Monday's "Remember When?"...2005's The Pillowman

2011-04-06T06:26:00.000-07:00

"There is the need for a brave and violent theatre that better impacts the country." - Brian Friel

Is there anything more brave and violent than McDonagh's The Pillowman? It should have won the Tony for the best play, don't you agree?

Apparently I am still digging around 2005. I unearthed my Playbill for The Pillowman starring Billy Crudup, Jeff Goldblum, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Željko Ivanek. That's Željko with a diacritic.

I bring this up because, with Billy's current (and brilliant) appearance in Tom Stoppard's Arcadia, I have finally learned how to pronounce his name. It's "crewed-up." Thank you, Jimmy Fallon. You seemed a little drunk during the interview, but "Anyone here like to listen to words?" is extremely amusing. See for yourself.

Mr. Crewedup played the possible protagonist in The Pillowman, Katurian K. Katurian, so named because his parents were funny people. Martin McDonagh is funny people too. The Pillowman remains McDonagh's best work. Perhaps because it is taken out the donkey cart Ireland milieu of his Leenane or Aran Islands trilogies, The Pillowman is his sharpest satire on Irish storytelling and the nature of theatre, reminding us that the "first duty of a storyteller is to tell a story" or is it "the only duty of a storyteller is to tell a story." I can't remember. Anyway, Happy Monday!

Monday's "Remember When?"...2005's The Rivals

2011-03-28T10:17:00.000-07:00

"Murder's the matter! slaughter's the matter! killing's the matter - but he can tell you the perpendiculars." - Mrs. Malaprop

I came across a stray 2005 Playbill this morning (which tells you a lot about my housekeeping habits) and promptly sat down to study it (which tells you even more). The Playbill for the Lincoln Center Theater's production of The Rivals gave me the idea and the permission to stroll a bit down memory lane, a trip that is more and more necessary the older I am, and the fuzzier things get. 2005 isn't that long ago, but anything earlier than last night is hazy (and sometimes, often times, that's hazy too.)

The Rivals is a great way to start such a remembrance project, not only because the production was terrific (that, I do remember), but because of all the connections for today. That Dana Ivey was a wonderful Mrs. Malaprop is hardly news (above with Richard Easton as Sr. Anthony Absolute), but how about this? David Furr, understudy and footman in The Rivals, was, until recently, Ms. Ivey's employer in The Importance of Being Earnest: Jack Worthing to her Miss Prism.

Ms. Ivey has left the role as has Paxton Whitehead as Miss Prism's romantic interest - the right Reverend Canon Chasuble. Who replaced Mr. Whitehead, why yes, thank you for asking: Brian Murray who was the right reverent (kinda) Sir Lucius O'Trigger in the LCT's The Rivals. At least three connections made between The Rivals and the current The Importance of Being Earnest; there's probably more. Please share.

I was amazed to read that I had seen Jim True-Frost as Faulkland, friend to romantic hero Jack Absolute. This came as a surprise to me and made it painfully clear that The Rivals came before my obsession re The Wire. Once you're aware of Roland Pryzbylewski, you don't forget him.

Speaking of Earnest, Variety is reporting that it will receive a HD cinemacast in June!

I'll try and do this frequently - maybe even once a week depending on how much procrastination is called for from life's perpendiculars.

Irish Arts Center's Mimic: The Old House Is In Ruins, But Let's Have a Laugh and a Song

2011-03-21T16:24:00.000-07:00

“Stay with me” entreats the storyteller in the Irish Arts Center’s new production here in New York City, but there is no need to ask. From the opening lines of Mimic, the audience is with Raymond Scannell as he reels off the Kafkaesque story of Julian Neary, gifted impressionist and the adopted son of a conservative family caught in the discordant reconstructions in Ireland’s national economy and culture.

Winner of Best Male Performer at the 2008 Dublin Fringe Festival with Mimic, composer/writer Scannell integrates innovative piano accompaniments with a seat as the unreliable narrator of Julian’s biography. Eyeliner running down his cheeks, looking a bit like the Cure’s Robert Smith (who makes a brief appearance in allusion), Scannell begins at the end of Julian’s account and ends at its beginning. He tells Julian’s story, voices Julian’s thoughts, fills in for the orbiting characters in Julian’s exodus out of Ireland and his return home. It is fiction as anecdotal memoir complete with the whole of Ireland’s history hovering overhead - both ancient characters and futuristic nightmares on all sides of the pitch.

Directed and designed by Tom Creed, fresh from the success of Samuel Beckett’s Watt at the recent Under the Radar festival, Mimic takes place on a stark set, black doorways for beginnings and endings, red lights blink randomly invoking a spaceship atmosphere (as does the makeup – why does eyeliner on a man scream “alien,” someone blame David Bowie, quick). The piano is the major prop on set at which Scannell sits for the majority of time, playing alternately snippets of 80s hits and minor chords that are reminiscent of some future, especially ambient Radiohead song.

There are a lot of questions weaving around the story of Julian’s rise and fall that are left unanswered, and Mimic is the better for it. Is Julian’s gift a natural one or an unnatural one? What is it to be an actor if not to mimic something or someone? Why is Peter Falk’s Columbo so resonant? Left unanswered, the questions better support Mimic’s exploration as to the nature of effective performance.

Some of Mimic’s cultural satire sits rather heavily. The indictment of excessive plastic surgery is hardly controversial. Anyone who has seen Courtney Love lately would agree. Other jokes hit home, humorously highlighting just what might be worth saving in Irish culture. Another rebellion at the GPO anyone? Lurking around the corners of what could be considered a very traditional story of one adolescent’s breakout of a very traditional home metamorphoses into themes that evoke Ireland’s singular history: Joycean wordplay, Wilde (or is it Shavian?) epigrams, and homages to Yeats’ Celtic Twilight.

Originally appearing at the 2007 Cork Midsummer Festival, Mimic is beginning to look quite prescient with its predictions of a national addiction to celebrity (Charlie Sheen’s media victory over Muammar Gaddafi) amidst waves of capitalist agonies. At one point, the “fashion police” chase our protoganist, if we can call him that, in eerie foresight to today’s New York Times headline High Fascism – an op-ed piece on John Galliano’s spectacular fall off the roof at the House of Dior for his anti-Semitic remarks.

On opening night last Sunday, Ireland’s General Consul to New York, Noel Kilkenny, congratulated Mimic’sproduction team, the Irish Arts Center and Ireland itself for making good on its promise to continue to support the arts even as the financial sky falls all around. Arts funding, according to Consul Kilkenny, is the only area in Ireland’s budget that has seen an increase. And we here in New York certainly benefit. Mimic is part of the Imagine Ireland, Culture Ireland’s ambitious, year-long celebration of Irish Arts in the U.S.

Originally published in Diddlyi Magazine

Antidotes to Today's Green Beer and Mayor Bloomberg

2011-03-17T08:39:00.000-07:00

Happy St. Patrick's Day. Look at the picture taken on Inish Mor three years ago today and wonder no longer why we obsess about this island 365 days of the year, not just today.

Bloomberg may not know better, but I don't have to tell you that there is more to Ireland than green beer and plastic shamrocks. Here I am preaching to the Irish choir, but I'll proceed anyway.

A few things going on in NYC besides green Budweiser.

The Marvell Repertory Theatre is presenting Sygne's In The Shadow of the Glen with Sean Gormley (below) who has made an appearance a few times in this blog. If you want to know where Martin McDonagh got his offbeat, black humor, revisit some of Synge's playlets.

For something completely different, The Storm Theatre is presenting Dion Bouicault's Arrah-na-Pogue or The Wicklow Wedding as I would say because my Irish is completely useless.

Phil Mills and Nicola Murphy

(photo © Michael Abrams)

Finally, before I head south by southwest down the Henry Hudson to catch the opening of Arcadia (an opening - on St. Patrick's Day?!), I urge you to support the efforts of the Irish Arts Center in their attempt to defend against Bloombergian jokes about drunken Irishmen and the like. The IAC is celebrating the inaugural Irish Arts Center Book Day where volunteers will be handing out Ireland's real contribution to St. Patrick's Day and every day - literature! Free books by Irish and Irish-American authors will be offered at transportation hubs throughout the five boros. Look for them!

Seeing Is Not Believing: Friel's Molly Sweeney at the Irish Rep

2011-03-08T09:08:00.000-08:00

It is an unusual play that tempts an audience to close their eyes, to be like the sightless, taking stage and action out of the equation and reducing all to just spoken words, but that is what Brian Friel's Molly Sweeney suggests. Is it a technically a play then? Perhaps not. That's been debated since Molly Sweeney, a series of connected but not overlapping monologues between Molly, her husband Frank, and her doctor, first opened here in 1996 during a snowstorm that shut down New York for days (see, we were having apocalyptic blizzards back then too.) The question as to the drama quotient of Friel's plays was brought up too when Molly Sweeney's antecedent mirror The Faith Healer arrived to its initial, short 1979 New York run (side note: The Faith Healer is having a successful revival at the Bristol Old Vic with rumor that it may be headed to the West End.)

Currently running at The Irish Repertory Theatre, Molly Sweeny is the story of a woman, long blind, who has her sight restored only to have her unique sense of the world begin to deteriorate: she loses confidence and belief in her emotional and physical surroundings - a world that even the "sudden sparrows in the garden, they seemed aggressive, dangerous." The dramatic conflict remains then - should Molly have been left to her self - with her "calm and independence" as Dr. Rice, the ophthalmologist, describes her upon first meeting his patient.

The Irish Rep has recently extended the run until April 10th, and deservedly so. It is a worthy production, beautifully staged and well-acted. The story, told Rashomen-style with differing view points, is supported by a lyrical stage design - three singular windows representing the three characters' sensibilities - Molly, her husband Frank, and her doctor. The walls are bifurcated into light and dark; undoubtedly referring to the polarities of Molly's vision, but unfortunately the characters' motives are not so easily defined. The night before the operation, a surgery that may restore Dr. Rice's professional reputation and which may support husband Frank's altruistic idealism, Molly angrily wonders: "why am I going for this operation? None of this is my choosing."

Under the direction of Charlotte Moore, this Molly Sweeney tries to get out from under the criticisms of past productions - too literary, too loquacious, too sluggish, too many words! - by picking up the pace. Friel's poetry now tumbles down off stage at avalanche speed from the very first introduction as Molly describes how her father taught her, through invariable ritual, the different flowers of the garden by their touch and smell. You want to stop her and say, wait, slow down, stop and smell the flowers (no, let's not say that) - why do we have to rush headlong into what is obviously not going to end well?

Geraldine Hogan's Molly is a lot of things, you discern, bright, beautiful, a joy to be around, but she is hardly the calm presence that Dr. Rice is so struck by. Here she is full of energy running toward her fate. Her forcefulness changes the production's equilibrium, taking the over-ebullience away from Frank (the perfectly cast, comedic Ciarán O'Reilly), whose "projects" range from Iranian goat-herding to saving the whales, and reduces him into a merely charismatic husband who wants what's best for his wife. This production removes the quixotic in Frank from the equation of Molly.

Dr. Rice (the poignant Jonathan Hogan whose long, artistic fingers gesture as a surgeon's hands surely would) sees many things in Molly; a little of his ex-wife, a little bit salvation. Frank, Molly's husband, too, sees many things in Molly. She's a bit of a Rorschach test, isn't she, this woman who can't see but in whom others see themselves, project themselves. Molly is the eye of the storm, if you'll excuse the terrible pun. She is the Molly through which her do-gooder husband and her doctor wish to redeem themselves. She is the Miracle Molly.

Originally published on Diddlyi Magazine

B Is For Baby and A is for Awards Season East Coast Irish Style

2011-03-03T09:25:00.000-08:00

I'm a little late in posting this, but you'll forgive me, right? I'm nearing the end of a Tana French mystery, the thick Glenskahey atmosphere is building, and I still don't know who done it.

Last Sunday, when everyone here in the US was watching Red Carpet preparations, the Irish Times handed out its theatre awards, and it's worthwhile sharing that celebration because the night indicated just how much the Irish arts are balancing the dark news that takes up the rest of the newspaper. According to Times writer Patsy McGarry, the state of Irish Theatre "is in robust good health."

Perhaps, perhaps not, but director Lynne Parker said it best when she notes that she and the theatre company she helped found, "never really benefited from the boom" in the first place so theatre "has no intention of dying now."

An evening short on haute couture droolings, the awards were important to those of us who watch what happens in Dublin with the anticipation that some of those dramatics might come this way. The Abbey's B for Baby won Best New Play, and that is indeed something to look forward to.

Some of the actors at the Irish Times Theatre Awards who have appeared in this blog were Marty Rea who won Best Actor for his performance in Hamlet at the Second Age Theatre Company and his fellow nominee Karl Shiels as Quinn in my beloved Penelope. Marty Rea was just here last month in the Abbey's production of Fiona Shaw, I mean, John Gabriel Borkman. Karl was at the St. Ann's Warehouse production of Penelope and is now headed to Washington DC to be part of the Enda Walsh festival at the Studio Theatre running from March 15-April 3rd, which is, incidentally, peak cherry blossom time as has just been announced.

Here is Karl (right) with Niall Buggy (left) and Tadhg Murphy in the New York production of Penelope, showing just how brave an actor he is.

Pavel Antonov, courtesy of St. Ann's Warehouse.

Aoife Duffin appeared here, in Irish Stage in NYC, in Pan Pan's The Crumb Trail and prior, the brilliant Oedipus Loves You, both at P.S. 122 and both still in my brain. Aedín Cosgrove, who designed The Crumb Trail, won Best Set for The Rehearsal: Playing the Dane, directed by Gavin Quinn and produced by Pan Pan.

There's more, much more, feel free to add to my insufficient post, but I must go. I have a murderer to track down.

Theatre on the Radio

2011-02-25T17:19:00.000-08:00

For once I'm asking you to listen, not to read, for this was a week for Irish theatre on NYC radio:

First was Brian Bedford about his enormously successful The Importance of Being Earnest recently extended til July!

Then came the miracle of Brian Friel's Molly Sweeney in its first major revival here in the United States at the Irish Repertory Theatre starring Jonathan Hogan (above, left), Geraldine Hughes, and Ciarán O'Reilly.

And what is it about Irish and the theatre, Lenny? It's all about a good story.

The Minister's Wife - My Fair Candida

2011-02-19T14:39:00.000-08:00

Austin Pendleton is enjoying a great run right now as the director of the sold out Classic Stage production of Chekhov's The Three Sisters. Perhaps you've heard of it? Starring Brooklyn's royal family - the Saarsgards? But let's not be distracted by such star power. Let's focus on Austin's amazing 2011.

He is also directing, and acting a small role, in the current, seldom produced Tennesse Williams play, Small Craft Warnings. The Times review is here.

In a couple of months he will move uptown to Lincoln Center where the new musical, The Minister's Wife, with book by Austin Pendleton, hardest working man in NYC show business, will make its city premiere. The Minister's Wife is based upon George Bernard Shaw's Candida or at least an early version of Candida before Shaw's 1930 revisions. At that time, Shaw may have added more dialogue to the play that New York actor and director Richard Mansfield, so successful in Shaw's 1894 Arms and the Man, criticized as being "not a play but a three long acts of talk- talk-talk." Maybe all Candida needed was a few light-hearted tunes.

The Minister's Wife had its world premiere last spring at the Writer's Theatre in Glencoe, Il., with music by Joshua Schmidt and lyrics by Jan Levy Tranen. The project was conceived and is directed by Michael Halberstam. Marc Kudisch will be the Minister and Bobby Steggert will be his rival - the dread poet Marchbanks. Circling the love trio will be Liz Baltes as Prossy and Drew Gehling as Lexy. The pivotal role of Candida herself is played by Kate Fry. Here she is in a Chicago production with Kevin Gudahl as the Reverend Moral, I mean Morell.

Maybe new musical isn't the best way to describe this. It has been a long, heart driven project, and I wish it well. The word from Chicago is that it is a wonderful operetta. But that's suspect. Who's ever heard of a Shaw play being turned into a successful musical?

Speaking of which, the rumor is that Colin Firth will be the new Henry Higgins to Carey Mulligan's Eliza. Passed over before in the hopes that Hugh Grant would take over the record player, Oscar glow is making Firth's film offers rain down on Spain's plain and everywhere else.

WTF Stoops to Conquer the Sentimental Comedy

2011-02-11T07:23:00.000-08:00

The Williamstown Theatre Festival announced their 2011 Main Stage Season today, and Irish playwright Oliver Goldsmith is front and center with his radical pastoral (as Professor Declan Kiberd affectionately calls it) She Stoops to Conquer. This will be an especially welcome addition to the WTF line-up because it is, in large part of restaging, the comic success of the 2009 (was it really that long ago?!) She Stoops to Conquer at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton.

Directed again by Nicholas Martin, the WTF production will feature Brooks Ashmanskas (Tony Lumpkin), Kristine Nielson (Mrs. Hardcastle), Jonathan Patrick Walker (Charles), and Paxton Whitehead (Mr. Hardcastle) all recreating their McCarter roles. Here is a photo of Ms. Nielson is all her Chanel glory with Brooks Ashmanskas and Rebecca Brooksher looking on in sartorial dismay.

Bad dressing, cross-dressing, mistaken identity, She Stoops to Conquer is a farce and a marvelous one when done well as the McCarter production proved. It's also much more than that - a prescient satire on the British class system that resonates for dramatic generations to come. Witness the current triumph of Oscar Wilde and his The Importance of Being Earnest on Broadway. Wilde is much in debt to Goldsmith. Paxton Whitehead would be just the one to tell you. He is the right Reverend Chasuble, pictured here with the great Dana Ivey as Miss Prism. Summer can't get here soon enough.

John Duddy Makes U.S. Stage Debut in Kid Shamrock

2011-02-08T06:41:00.000-08:00

With an Oscar glow gathering around Marky Mark Wahlberg's Micky Ward (Micky without an "e" mind you), it's a perfect KO opportunity to restage Bobby Cassidy Jr.'s Kid Shamrock, a recreation of his father's bout with Rodrigo Valdez at Madison Square Garden on St. Patrick's Day, 1971.

The limited run starts tonight at the Atlantic Theatre's Stage 2 and runs through Sunday 2/13th. It is directed by Jimmy Smallhorne, the founder of the Irish Bronx Theatre and also stars Seamus McDonagh, Patrick Joseph Connolly, Gary Francis Hope, and Wayne Kelly; the entire cast made up of former pro-boxers.

Boxing may be hard to watch for the non-zealot. We'll see how Kid Shamrock plays out.

Boston Musn't Be Such a Bad Place, so if the Druid Theatre Wants to Go There

2011-02-05T14:16:00.000-08:00

There's a running joke during Martin McDonagh's oh so dark comedy (or should I say funny tragedy) The Cripple of Inishmaan. Different characters alternate pronouncements that Ireland must not be such a bad place if _______ wants to go there. McDonagh fills the blank with dentists, Frenchmen, and even sharks to distract the audience from realizing that, yes, McDonagh's Ireland is such a bad place. In his dramatic reality, even the sharks stay away from this Ireland where a young man, Billy Claven (Tadhg Murphy, above left), yearns, with his whole twisted body, to leave this island of twisted Synge souls.

The Druid Theatre kicked off the American tour of The Cripple of Inishmaan, directed by the omnipresent Garry Hynes, in Boston this week proving that Boston, Massachusetts must not such a bad place after all.

It is an ambitious tour, the longest one in decades by an Irish theatre, venturing to Washington, L.A., Ann Arbor, Chicago, Philadelphia, and New Haven among other cities, but Boston is a perfect place to start because it is the reference that the Aran Islanders place all their perceptions of America, at least those notions that don't incorporate Hollywood and that town's skewed vision of Ireland. Boston is where Bartley's (Laurence Kinlan, above and below, right) aunt lives and if anything good should arrive by post, it will come from Boston, even if that package should contain a picture of candy rather than the real thing.

Laurence Kinlan is one of the cast that appeared in the Atlantic Theatre's poignant production in 2009 along with Dearbhla Molloy (pictured, left). Ms. Molloy has the additional distinction of being the original Eileen, Billy's adoptive aunt, from the original Royal National Theatre production in 1996.

I was lucky enough to see that production when it came to New York at the Joseph Papp Theatre with Ruaidhri Conroy as Cripple Billy. You remember Ruaidhri. He was adorable as Tito in Gabriel Byrne's Into the West.

He was less than adorable as Cripple Billy but appropriately so. Here he is with Aisling O'Sullivan as Slippy Helen.

But enough about the old days. I will catch this tour when it comes through New Haven because I would never miss the opportunity to see Tadhg Murphy as Billy. Mr. Murphy has blasted through town lately in the recent Enda Walsh plays - Penelope and The Walworth Farce - to great effect. I look forward to what he will do with this iconic McDonagh character.

The Abbey Theatre Brings a Blizzard of Discontent to Brooklyn.

2011-01-30T17:25:00.000-08:00

The subject matter could not be any more relevant, ripped from the headlines kind of stuff. A banker succumbs to the “greed is good” theory, and we see how his family suffers for his actions. Never mind that this banker, one of Henrik Ibsen’s last creations, predates Gordon Gekko by 91 years. John Gabriel Borkman, as offered by Ireland’s Abbey Theatre at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Harvey Theatre, wants to remind us of Bernie Madoff, even as we watch a 19th century embezzler, and think: “boy, this white collar crime has been going on for a long time, hasn’t it.” The question remains, what do we do with this new/old evidence of fiscal villainy?

In this recent version of the play by Irish playwright Frank McGuinness, John Gabriel Borkman, with its stark and remarkable set design by Tom Pye featuring snow, snow, falling snow, blowing snow, and more snow represents the coldness and isolation in Borkman’s soul. Despite years in prison and then years spent as a prisoner in his own home, Borkman is hubristically unrepentant. He only sees the lost opportunity to be a master of the universe as American author Tom Wolf describes it. The set is without walls – outside seeps in – because the people themselves are walled in against each other with only pacing footsteps and the ticking of clocks breaking through barriers – announcing the inevitable passage of time.

A contemporarily relevant Borkman seems to be the intention of McGuinness, director James Macdonald, and the Abbey, but in actuality, as it is played on the snow strewn stage in Brooklyn, the play becomes something else in the clenched hands of actress Fiona Shaw. As Borkman’s wife Gunhild, Ms. Shaw runs away with the play.

From the minute she enters on stage, clutching her side as if she has a runner’s stitch from running miles away from her family’s scandal (and running miles toward unattainable aspirations for her son), the magnificent Ms. Shaw takes the Abbey production and makes it into something perhaps unintended – a play that has more in common with a Greek tragedy perhaps than anything Ibsen wrote. Borkman himself is played by the formidable and inscrutable Alan Rickman, but he is no match for Gunhild. She doesn’t have to throw herself on the floor in rage (but she does) to win the battles for the audience’s attention for there is no emotional scenario spared in this production.

Gunhild’s terrible anger at her humiliation, held to her heart for years, makes her recognizably human, perhaps not attractive, but still human, while Borkman and Ella, her sister, are arctic and brittle, barely human at all. Mr. Rickman, with his familiar measured tones, even in the most heated argument, is bulldozed by the scorned woman’s fury. Lindsay Duncan (center of photo), as the sister Ella who once was Borkman’s intended and who has raised Borkman’s son during his incarceration, is a veritable ice princess, pale and blonde and blending into the snowstorms as if she were imagined.

Gunhild not only harbors anger but jealousy as well against rivals for her son’s affections – her sister, her husband and a neighbor, Mrs. Wilton. As performed by Cathy Belton, Gunhild obviously has plenty to worry about. From the sarcastic onset, Mrs. Wilton is an older woman obviously using young Erhart for her amusement. Under such circumstances, Gunhild’s anxious tantrums are completely understandable and dwarf any further concerns about Ella and Borkman and those factories that Borkman still dreams of building.

Ms. Shaw not only supplies the pathos; she also brings the humor. Often, a cutting retort was played for its welcome comedy rather than its cruelty. John Kavanagh as Vilhelm Foldal, Borkman’s steadfast, only friend, is comic in his status as innocent foil to Borkman’s machinations. Played on both sides of the comedy fence, the production invites us to both laugh at and laugh with Foldal. No one gets the last laugh however. This is Ibsen.

John Gabriel Borkman runs through Feb. 6th at the BAM Harvey Theatre. Photo by Richard Termine / AP). Article originally published in Diddlyi Magazine

Andrew Andrew in Brooklyn Brooklyn

2011-01-18T18:34:00.000-08:00

On a Brooklyn night that had snow both inside and out, I met one of the Andrews at the Abbey's John Gabriel Borkman at BAM. I don't know which one it was, but I do know that he was delightful. We spoke about how much we loved Enda Walsh's Penelope and how the ending scene still resonates. Especially on such a cold, snowy night.

I don't always agree with what they say (more on that later), but I always find it amusing.

Brian Bedford's Bracknell: Her Ladyship is Welcomed Back to Broadway

2011-01-17T16:35:00.000-08:00

The Importance of Being Earnest is omnipresent in New York City. At any given moment, on an Off-Off-Broadway stage, Algernon is eating his muffins calmly amidst his domestic chaos because to do otherwise would drip butter on his cuffs. A small cast and a classic comedy guarantee frequency of production, but it has been quite some time since Algernon refused everything but eat and drink on Broadway – not since the 1977 Circle in the Square production starring John Glover and Mary Louise Wilson among other notables. The Roundabout Theatre has now brought Algy, and his remarkable relatives, back in a production that makes the 116 -year-old play as funny and fresh as the first time you may have seen Ernest and his opponent/aunt/mother-in-law Lady Bracknell square off.

Read the rest here on Diddlyi Magazine!

To See And Not See

2011-01-12T12:22:00.000-08:00

It is opening night for the Abbey Theatre's John Gabriel Borkman at BAM, and I have a quick tug of doubt whether to attend. We had a lot of snow last night, and it's piled everywhere - up on top of the last two storms' residue. It makes me want to hibernate with Major Pettigrew's Last Stand.

But the mailman, taking his job as seriously today as once was expected, has delivered the Irish Rep's postcard announcement of Molly Sweeney. The play, the snow, an opening night - it all reminds me of the last time I saw Molly Sweeney - 1996, the production directed by the playwright himself, starring Jason Robards, Alfred Molina, and Catherine Byrne.

There was a snowstorm, the kind that makes Fifth Avenue into a quiet, white canyon. The theatre was sparsely attended that night, and we barely caught a train home, arriving to a broken furnace and a cold house, but it was all worth it. Alfred Molina made a positive impression that lasts to this day, and I spied Friel himself, up high in the booth. It was a privilege to be there even before I received the gift pictured below, a signed copy of Molly Sweeney. How could I not go tonight?

John Gabriel Borkman and Molly Sweeney, the latter based upon Oliver Sacks' "To See And Not See," - we'll see!

Snow and the Gabriels....

2011-01-11T07:09:00.000-08:00

Working on a more enlightened writeup on The Importance of Being Earnest now - it is merely an old girl's records of her thoughts and impressions and consequently meant for publication - but not until the 13th, Earnest's opening. Soon, here, it will begin to snow again over the treeless hills of Yonkers. It will fall faintly (and not so much) through the universe and upon all the living and the dead. Snow will fall on John Gabriel Borkman which opens tomorrow at BAM. Alan Rickman has been staring at me for months now from my New York Times homepage so I'm looking forward to staring at him back.

And speaking of Gabriels, here is Gabriel Byrne on BroadwayWorld.com, talking about Culture Ireland's latest outreach. It has a long intro - wait for it. Please.

Ben Brantley on Brian Bedford's Bracknell: Oh the Sunday Morning Alliteration!

2011-01-08T09:50:00.000-08:00

I don't know if I entirely agree with the start of tomorrow's Ben Brantley NY Times piece on Brian Bedford. Brantley supposes that Lady Bracknell would not have approved of Brian Bedford - what with his working class roots and all - but the good Lady freely admits that she started with nothing "but I never dreamed for a moment of allowing that to stand in my way." Seems like a similar success story to me.

And as far as Lady Bracknell liking people who "fit snugly into categories," I would argue that we see her Ladyship bend lots of rules, skirt lots of categories in order to make things go her way. She'll even change the fashion surrounding Jack Worthing's town address. But the rest of the column is a beautifully written tribute to a great actor. We are lucky to have Mr. Bedford in town.

There will be much more on The Importance of Being Earnest here after the show opens on the 13th, but until then, judging from my usual place in the last row mezzanine, I can tell you that this show is delightful. People (and I) laughed as if it were the very first Earnest.

One performance I especially enjoyed was David Furr as Jack Worthing, here pictured with Bedford and Sara Topham (you will see a correction coming from the photo in tomorrow's NYT).

photo by Joan Marcus

Now everyone love Algy. Actors eat up his one-liners as if they were the Black Label burger at Minetta Tavern, but the role of Jack is a true test. He can be dull and merely reactive (see Colin Firth's rare misstep in the 2002 movie, but then again, that whole movie was a misstep), but here Jack is a singular comic role in equal balance with Algernon's absurdity. This is the success of the Stratford Festival by way of the Roundabout's production - a rare comic equilibrium for this play. Can't wait to go back.

Culture Ireland Launches Culture with Imagination AND Funding

2011-01-07T12:45:00.000-08:00

Apparently Minister Micheál Martin has made good on his promise last fall that the Irish government would not only continue to support the export of Irish Arts but would increase funding. At the time, it seemed puzzling just how this could happen with Ireland's dire economic circumstances on the front page of all the business periodicals that I don't read. Today, the Wall Street Journal covered the announcement made by Ireland's cultural ambassador Gabriel Byrne and City Council President and heir apparent to the Mayorship, Christine Quinn, pictured here with CEO Culture Ireland Eugene Downes (left,) actor Gabriel Byrne, Minister for Culture Mary Hanafin (center,) and writer Colum McCann.

photo by Krissie Fullerton

With an investment of 5.2 million dollars into 400 events, it will be a feast for the blogger. Now off to catch a train to the Roundabout. Lady Bracknell waits and she/he doesn't wait patiently.

A Hogmanay present....

2011-01-03T09:00:00.000-08:00

To borrow from our Celtic cousins, the Scots Gaelic who traditionally burn a Viking ship on Dec. 31 (above,) let me request a hogmanay from you, a New Year's present. Help me finish my "things I'm thankful list" on the Thanksgiving post. Help me start the New Year right!

The Roundabout Ends 2010: Out with the Shaw, In with Being Earnest.

2010-12-17T05:53:00.000-08:00

Christmas comes early this year, in fact it begins today with previews starting at the Roundabout's The Importance of Being Earnest starring and directed by Brian Bedford as Lady Bracknell.

Continuing on the theme of extraordinary....and British....women, the Roundabout, which just recently closed Cherry Jones' Mrs. Warren and her chosen (or coerced, depending on how you look at it) profession, shuts one door on a dowager and opens another.

At 74 years old, Mr. Bedford may never have performed in Earnest prior to this, but he certainly made the most of the comedy when appearing at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in 2009 to rave reviews and an anticipated arrival here in New York.

People who are devoted to the Irish Rep will see some familiar faces in Dana Ivey as Miss Prism and Charlotte Parry as Cecily. There will be much more on this, of course, we can only hope that the good end happily and the bad unhappily.

Speaking of happy (the Druid Theatre) and the unhappy (the rivals of Odysseus), congratulations to Penelope and Enda Walsh for making Ben Brantley's Top Ten of 2010 list. Sitting behind Ben on media night, I have to say, he did indeed seem to be having a great time.

Dancing at Lughnasa: Chekhov Had His Three Sisters, Friel Has Five.

2010-12-16T07:40:00.000-08:00

Actresses, Irish and otherwise, should always send Brian Friel flowers of appreciation on his birthday (calendar entry: January 9th) for he wrote one of the great plays in the English language for an actress—many actresses, in fact. The Gallery Players in Brooklyn are presenting Dancing at Lughnasa with some outstanding performances on the occasion of this canonical play's 20th anniversary of appearing at the Abbey Theatre.

There's Chekhov and his Three Sisters (Friel is a big fan), and then there is Friel and his Five Sisters. While there is no yearning for Moscow amongst these Irish women, there is heartache all the same—small-scale stuff compared to Chekhov's aristocrats perhaps, but desire is desire despite the scale. Friel's sisters, who struggle to live and work in a small town in rural Donegal, Ireland, want to go to the harvest dance, to keep a job, to own a working radio—is that too much to ask? Yes, it turns out it is. This is Irish drama, after all.

In the beginning of the play, there is a moment when a first-time viewer may wonder just how to differentiate these middle-aged women, dressed alike in drab dresses and drabber aprons, all living in impoverished isolation while caring for an ill uncle and a young, fatherless child.

Christina (Leigh Williams, above left) complains that their Uncle Jack, who has returned from a 25-year missionary service in Uganda much the worse for wear, can't tell one sister from the other: "Sometimes he doesn't know the difference between us. I've heard him calling you Rose and he keeps calling me some strange name like..." Some of their names even rhyme—Aggie and Maggie. It is as if Friel is daring you to dismiss the women much like their town of Ballybeg does.

Are they women of no importance, to borrow a title from Friel's compatriot, Oscar Wilde? This production, under the direction of Heather Siobhan Curran, ensures that you will not shrug off these characters nor their concerns, seemingly provincial at first, but very much universal: love, fulfillment, happiness. Within minutes, there is no confusion between Aggie (Therese Plaehn), the tender beauty of the family, and Maggie ( the charming Amanda McCallum,) a comedienne every bit as wild as the Wild Woodbine cigarettes she smokes.

Article originally published on blogcritics.org. Please read the rest of the article here:

Once Upon a December

2010-12-01T06:13:00.000-08:00

Happy first day of the last month.

Two Irish plays are scheduled for December.

It seems that Niall Buggy wasn't kidding with me when he told me he was going from "Enda to Edna." Niall, who recently starred in Enda Walsh's Penelope at St. Ann's Warehouse, is featured in Edna O'Brien's Haunted at 59E59.

Haunted, starting previews today, is part of 59's Brits off Broadway series. Technically, and I am almost always technical, County Clare claims O'Brien. She was desperately unhappy there as was so often the case with these writer types and moved to London in the 1950s.

The new play, produced by the Royal Exchange Theatre, also stars the wonderful Brenda Blethyn (above with Niall Buggy). The Academy Award nominee really is British, no matter how you spin it, at least the Queen thinks so - Brenda Blethyn OBE.

Across the river, the Gallery Players are featuring a play full of nostalgic sunshine in Brian Friel's Dancing at Lughnasa. Perfect for the shortest days of the year and for an antidote to all that en pointe during Nutcracker season.

Theatre I'm Thankful for in 2010

2010-11-25T06:17:00.000-08:00

Looking back at the year, I see many things to be grateful for in the Irish theatre world. Here are some in no particular order...oh wait...the beginnings appear to be alphabetical. What luck!

A as in Mr. Angus Hepburn for whom the Folding Chair waited long to do The Weir. It was worth the wait.

B is awkwardly for John Bull's Other Island - Shaw's only "Irish" play and rarely produced - done strikingly well and with relevance at this year's Shaw Festival.

C as in Ms. Cherry Jones. No matter what else was going on with Mrs. Warren's Profession at the Roundabout, it was a chance to see Cherry.

D is for Druid's. The place to go after an Irish Arts Center event or any midtown visit for that matter. Tenth Avenue isn't that far! Shane the bartender will make you feel welcome.

Photo by Shanna Ravindra

E is for Enda of course. Enda. Not Edna. Though Edna O'Brien is a lovely writer, it was Enda Walsh's year with Penelope which will prove to be a cottage industry unto itself for us overthinking types.

F is for Forgotten as in gone but not forgotten - Pat Kinevane in Fishamble's Forgotten.

G is for Gormley as in Sean who was so patient in giving me an interview on filning a key scene in the premier episode of HBO's Treme. I was a bit of a fan, I'm afraid.

H is for Hell's Kitchen in general and the Irish Arts Center in particular. It's my favorite neighborhood in the city.

I is for In Treatment and the acting chops displayed twice a week by Gabriel Byrne no matter who's sitting across the table.

J is for J.R. Sullivan, artistic director of The Pearl Theatre Company. Here is a recent article from J. R.'s hometown paper on the holiday show he directs there. The Pearl? Well, it's always a gem as you well know, terrible puns aside.

K is for the divine Dervla Kirwan. Here she is in the shadow of the good Doctor, but she wasn't in the shadow of Colin Farrell in March 2010's Ondine. Ms. Kirwan definitely held her own, if not her drink, in sharing the camera with a selkie.

Liam is for Liam.... needs no last name, but I'll give it ya anyway. Mr. Neeson is probably more like it. Remember when he was Oscar Wilde in David Hare's The Judas Kiss? I do. It proved that Liam had more than one big fella role in him.

M is for the Mint Theatre of course and the wonderful Wife of James Whelan of 2010. I'm grateful too that the Lennox Robinson revival spearhead of 2009 will see some delightful repercussions in 2011.

N is for Niall Buggy who made the most of the bookish Fitz in Enda Walsh's Penelope. His will be the last performance I see in 2010. I'm squeaking in Haunted right under the annum wire.

O is for Owen and for O'Neill as in Owen O'Neill in his performance and play Absolution. Even though the ending was obvious for me since the onset of the one-act, that didn't take anything away from O'Neill's tremendous achievement.

I return now to the regularly scheduled 27 lb. turkey and the 24 dinner guests. I will try to add more as the day wears on us all.

Honey, I'm Home - The American Premiere of Penelope

2010-11-17T19:09:00.000-08:00

Enda Walsh’s Penelope is, in the playwright’s words, about “atonement and redemption and what it is to face death,” you know, an Irish comedy.

In his latest play, a Druid Theatre production which is in its first American appearance, Walsh moves off-island, Ireland, to another island and another time – Ithaca during ancient Greece. The playwright revisits an ancillary story in The Odyssey: the steadfast Penelope and her mercurial suitors. Waiting for her husband’s return after 20 years at the Trojan War, the apparently widowed Queen of Ithaca has accumulated many would-be husbands – all lined up, vying for her attention in distinctive Enda Walsh ways – with multimedia presentations, cocktails, Speedos and a soundtrack by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass.

When the play opens, only four suitors remain in the competition for the possibility of marriage to Penelope. The blood on the wall signifies what may have happened to the other one hundred contestants. The men each represent a passage of time: Burns is in his thirties, Quinn his forties, Dunne – fifties, and Fitz, the quiet reader, is in his sixties. The prior night, the men all shared the same dream – the return of the famous traveler and their subsequent death at his vengeful hand. To change their charging fate, the men try one more time to persuade Penelope to take one of them as a husband and save the group from murder.

Each suitor has his moment in the spotlight – literally. Dunne grabs the microphone first, and as played by Denis Conway who was last here in New York in Walsh’s dynamic, genre-busting The Walworth Farce, offers a soliloquy as unsubtle jab at acting and actors. Sometimes I wonder if Walsh unconsciously dislikes actors, e.g. absurdly tiny swim suits, hyperactive costume changes, horrifying hairstyles, but I’m laughing too hard to feel truly sorry for the actors.

Fitz (Niall Buggy) is the pill-popping elder of the group who is fated to be first filleted by our returning hero. A lover of Homer and of the Odyssey text, he ironically comes closest to winning Penelope but loses the moment when he chooses the book over the woman. Academicians, take note.

Quinn (Karl Shiels) is a man of action and in doing so, sabotages some of the group’s best efforts to combine and conquer. I hope I’m not giving away too much of the story here, but can you really have a spoiler from the 8th century?

Finally, Burns (Tadhg Murphy, above), the youngest, is the most empathetic of the bunch, but his emotionalism and a need for revenge proves to be his challenge. All the men try their best, which isn’t very good, before Olga Wehrly as Penelope, who, without a word, is as strong a character as legend would have it. In fact, with her unattainability and her perfection, the character moves out of ancient Greece back home with intimations of the otherworldly Kathleen ni Houlihan, the feminine epitome of Ireland.

The stage design by Sabine Dargent is literally out of this world. A nightmarish scene of an empty swimming pool with the debris of lifetimes of uselessness filling the corners. The design was one of the compelling reasons I returned to see Penelope a second time.

I rarely do this, but I waited and revisited Penelope before attempting to write anything about it. The first time around the play was a storm of words, a verbal tornado really, and like a tornado, Penelope has lightning flashes of real brilliance. I went back to make sure what I saw the first time was actually what happened. It was, and Penelope proved to be even more innovative in its recreation.

Directed by Mikel Murfi, Penelope is at St. Ann’s Warehouse through November 14.

First published in diddlyi magazine.

Gabriel Byrne, You're Listening Very Loudly

2010-11-12T07:38:00.000-08:00

I don't usually do television here, but In Treatment is an exception and not just because Gabriel Byrne is involved.

Each half-hour episode, four altogether, is a two-character one-act play containing a three scene story arc: the first scene sets up what the patients want to talk about with therapist Dr. Paul Weston (Gabriel Byrne); the second scene is the discovery of why the patients are really there, and the final scene is some kind of resolution for Paul or the patient or lack of resolution altogether which is, of course, the most realistic conclusion of all. This sounds all a bit rote, but with In Treatment's excellent acting and writing, the show elevates above the formulaic.

The stage drama as television drama is not surpising here. Last season, Marsha Norman, Tony and Pulitzer winner, wrote the Gina stories - Paul's visits to his therapist. This year, accomplished playwright Sarah Treem, who started her theatrical success at the age of 12, not only writes the Jesse storyline but also is a series producer.

In Treatment's writers, its theatrical format, its dramatic aspirations: all these things make this reviewer, whose regular beat is the theatre, very, very happy. Add to that, an unusually short introductory theme song, and it equals exceptional television.

If you follow HBO's In Treatment, I invite you to read and hopefully comment on my television column over at Blogcritics.org.

Lennox Robinson at the 2011 Shaw Festival's 50th Anniversary

2010-11-11T10:38:00.000-08:00

It's not in New York theatre, but it's newsworthy and has its roots in NYC - spoken in a typical myopic New Yorkese, right?

Yesterday, the Shaw Festival announced their 2011 schedule and cast and of particular interest is the addition of Lennox Robinson's Drama at Inish: A Comedy to their lineup! This will be the first time Robinson is featured in the acclaimed theatre festival: “Lennox Robinson is a well kept Irish secret — a brilliant comic playwright who was a major part of the Irish Theatre movement throughout the first half of the 20th Century. Time to introduce him to Canada!” Time indeed.

Drama at Inish cast includes: Ric Reid (John Twohig), Mary Haney (Lizzie Twohig), Thom Marriott (Hector de la Mare) and Corrine Koslo (Constance Constantia), with Donna Belleville, Julia Course, Diana Donnelly, Peter Krantz and Craig Pike. previews May 6, opens May 27, closes Oct. 1.

Drama at Inish appeared here in NYC last year at the Mint Theatre under the guise of Is Life Worth Living?: Review here. Obviously, the Shaw figured the play was worth producing. I would speculate that the Mint and its artistic director Jonathan Bank had a great deal to do with that.

Shaw's Saint Joan: Miraculous and Unbearable

2010-11-11T08:42:00.000-08:00

The Secret Theatre continues their ambitious agenda of dramatic masterworks, following up the recent Julius Caesar with the current production of Shaw's Saint Joan. It is a germane juxtaposition: Shaw compares Joan's fall from political grace as the rescuer of France to "the pretensions of Caesar to Cassius." It is also relevant that, to Shaw and in Shaw's work, Julius Caesar is Joan's counterpart—Caesar was Shaw's "superman," Joan, his "superwoman." And she paid the price for that.

Joan of Arc, the narrator explains, was a village girl born about 1412, burnt for heresy, witchcraft, and sorcery in 1431, rehabilitated after a fashion in 1456, canonized in 1920. Through Joan, Shaw explores issues of organized religion, nationalism, jingo patriotism as Shaw calls it, feminism, the class system—and all this before the end of the first scene. These aren't issues confined to the 15th century but are parallel to topics of today whenever anyone pushes against social norms.

The success of Saint Joan depends on, well, Saint Joan, and Shelleen Kostabi (pictured below) is an excellent Maid of Orleans. She brings the right mixture of naiveté and wisdom, boyishness and femininity: all the contradictions that make up Shaw's larger-than-life, larger-than-any-one-history-or-religion's heroine. You share her joy at her successes, and when her saints seemingly desert her, you feel her internal torment.

It's not only Joan who is complicated, what with her obsession with "France for the French" and her overeagerness for things military. Complex characters are what make up Saint Joan: people who at the same time adhere to and revolt against accepted understandings of history—from the church's point of view, the state's point of view, and all through an artist's reflection. is Joan a martyr? If so, by whose hands? The questions are raised by varied characters, characters who can individually represent differing factions, even if as a whole they seem to be single-minded in their persecution of Joan.

Tim Moore as Peter Cauchon personified some of these contradictions. A Bishop in the French Catholic Church, he is vilified for being Joan's persecutor, but, as Moore sits in judgment, he exudes the kindness and patience and true caring Shaw's cleric has for the teenager. When Moore says that "his first duty is to seek this girl's salvation," you believe him. And when he is confused and angered by Joan's insistence that she gets direct messages from God, without the intercession of the Catholic Church, he becomes far from the villain that history would portray; Shaw makes him, and Mr. Moore plays him, as a committed, compassionate man who loves his church and who makes the best decision he can under the circumstances. Shaw, raised as a Protestant in 19th century Dublin, certainly makes the case for the very real scruples of Cauchon, the Catholic ecclesiastical.

This production, as directed by Ken Neil Hailey, is in full oration mode. Perhaps because Saint Joan followed so soon after Julius Caesar, there is a lot of "Shakespeare" in this Shaw, accentuating the lectures to the detriment of the characterization.

It's always better to do Shaw without the bombast—hold the spittle and the speech and let the nuance and droll humor emerge. The Inquisitor (Bruce Barton) is described by Shaw as a "mild elderly man with reserves of authority and firmness." His mildness in text contrasts effectively with the horror of the sentence he wants for the young girl—being burnt at the stake. To "Shakespeare" Shaw, as this production does, only reinforces Shaw's weakness—the infernal preachiness.

On the whole, the production was too broadly dramatic. Sometimes too comic: one member of the Inquisition seemed to bring the physicality of Monty Python to the court, as in "no one expects the French inquisition." Sometimes it was too pathetic, with wailing and gnashing of teeth—something that Joan herself rejects in the epilogue. Saint Joan here has wild mood swings. Such an approach is antithetical to the work itself, which tries to separate itself from melodrama: as Shaw says, Joan was "a genius and a saint, about as completely the opposite of a melodramatic heroine as it is possible for a human being to be." Melodrama interferes with artistic statements of contemporary relevance.

One of the not-so-secret successes of the Secret Theatre is their continued appreciation of the audience in concrete ways. In this production, the audience sat as part of the royal court. First with Bluebeard (the amusing Graciany Miranda who seemed to really enjoy having a bluebeard, literally) as the fake Dauphin, and then we are part of the court with the real heir whom Joan must convince to take his rightful throne and place at the head of his army. This role is played by Jonathan Emerson, who, having been Octavius Caesar in Julius Caesar, is now temporarily demoted to the unwilling Dauphin and then reinstated to true monarch as Charles the Victorious who leads the movement to "rehabilitate" the image of Joan but obviously much too little and too late.

Expanding the Gentleman role into a narrator (well-played by Chris Rivera) was a clever way to handle some of Shaw's infamous preface. Sometimes Shaw's prefaces would run longer than the plays themselves. In this case, however, the preface is quite necessary because we are dealing with a historical personage. Without the preface, we would lose such glories as: "There were only two opinions about her. One was that she was miraculous; the other that she was unbearable."

The Queens Players are correct when they say that Saint Joan is rarely produced—the long running time and the 24 roles can prove unwieldy for a small theatre company—but I was lucky enough to see the 2007 Shaw Festival production that moved from Ontario to Chicago for a successful run. Instead of seeing a melodrama, the audience saw themselves on stage, well-meaning people who destroy their saints.

There are two Shaw plays in New York City right now (and with two Conor McPherson plays, an Enda Walsh play in Brooklyn, and Patrick Fitzgerald's Gibraltar currently running on the Bowery, I would have to ask: where would New York theatre be without the Irish, but then I would digress). As formidable as the sublime Cherry Jones is in the present Mrs. Warren's Profession, across the East River from Broadway, Shaw's greatest female role is taking place in Queens.

Additional cast: Logan Riley Bruner (page), David Douglas (Archbishop of Rheims), Robert Eigen (Warwick), Jaike Foley-Schultz (English soldier), Brother Martin (Cory Hibbs), Gary Lizardo (Robert de Baudricourt), Ari Lew (La Hire), Kurt Roediger (Canon), Greer Samuels (Poulengey), Josh Silverman (De Stogumber), Camilla Skoglie (Duchess), Eric Stephenson (Steward), Randy Warshaw (Executioner), Eric William Whitehead (Dunois), Dalles Wilie (Georges), Jonathan Zipper (Thomas de Courcelles).

The Queens Players Present Saint Joan through November 13.

First published in blogcritics.org

The Weir: Ghost Stories that Resonate Beyond Halloween

2010-11-04T10:09:00.000-07:00

It seems to be the month of Conor McPherson here in New York City. It’s unclear whether this is a serious trend, we’ll have to wait until next October to see if it repeats itself. The Weir is at the Off-Broadway Access Theatre (which happens to be on Broadtway,) and the Irish Repertory Theatre is featuring the one-man piece St. Nicholas. If it’s Halloween, it’s McPherson at the theatre.

It is true that many of McPherson’s stories hold an eerie element and might then seem a natural fit for this time of year, but the unworldly is not used in a gratuitous manner. Whether it is a ghost story in The Weir or the vampires in St. Nicholas, McPherson utilizes the supernatural to illuminate what is most natural in a human being – the need for connection and meaning in an ordinary life.

Yesterday’s New York Times travel section featured an article on Ireland (not such a rare occurrence) citing the “desolation of its rural villages” where “it was sometimes hard to find human beings at all, let alone a pub or face where I could meet them.” The town in The Weir is one of these rural villages. Desolation lies outside. At a small pub, five people try and fend off the desolation within by telling each other stories. They start as ghost stories culminating with stories of real tragedy.

After the show, director Marcus Geduld said that he wanted to stage The Weir for some time but was “waiting for Angus to be available for the role of Jack.” It was worth the wait. Although Angus Hepburn (photo, left) spends too much of the beginning of the play with his back to the house, a natural situation for being in the pub but difficult for the audience, when he is front and center, he holds everyone in the palm of his hands just as a natural storyteller should.

Jim, who does a bit of work at Jack’s garage, is played by Gowan Campbell (photo- right,) so still and restrained that he seems as if he was a member of the audience that accidentally took a wrong seat. When it is Jim’s turn to tell his story, Campbell opens up. It may have been the intention of the director, but in an ensemble, everyone must make their presence felt if not heard.

Richard Ryan Cowden is perfectly blustery as Finbar, the local businessman-realtor. Finbar brings the “blow-in” – the new person in town – Valerie, a woman from Dublin who arrives with her own story to tell. Lisa Blankenship’s cheerful countenance effectively hides Valerie’s tragedy until it is devastatingly revealed to her welcoming new community.

The attentive pub owner, Brendan (Ian Gould, photo – center), the only member of the group that doesn’t have a story to tell, is the receptor rather than a catalyst. For now. The characters agree to come back to his pub even in the height of tourist season. Brendan will provide a center for the relationships we see on stage: “Will you be okay in that wind?”

When McPherson first came to the US with this play in 1999, he was deemed England’s “most promising playwright.” Eleven years later, classical theatre companies are offering his plays. Why? Because, as the woman next to me told Hepburn: “you had me in tears at the sandwich.” Who else but McPherson can make an audience weep at the recitation of a sandwich made with the kindness of a stranger.

The Weir can be found on the daunting fourth floor of 380 Broadway, Access Theatre through November 6. Stay after the show and have a Guinness with the cast. Tell them a ghost story.

Blogger with cast, (l to r) Lisa Blankenship, Ian Gould, me, Angus Hepburn.

First published in Diddlyi Magazine

Mrs. Warren's Profession: And This Is The Business You Invite Me to Join You In?

2010-11-03T05:12:00.000-07:00

Mrs. Warren's Profession is not really about Mrs. Warren or her profession as the madam of many brothels, quite a scandalous topic when G. B. Shaw wrote the play in 1893. As larger than life a character as Mrs. Warren may be, the play is really about Mrs. Warren's daughter. From beginning scene to the final curtain, Mrs. Warren's Profession examines the immediate effect of the mother's strong personality and her chosen career on sheltered daughter Vivian Warren.

In this production, directed by Doug Hughes, that daughter, around which the entire storyline revolves, is Golden Globe winner Sally Hawkins (photo, right.) Ms. Hawkins won the Golden Globe for the movie Happy-Go-Lucky. There's nothing Happy-Go-Lucky about Vivie Warren, the hardened businesswoman determined to avoid her mother's world.

Vivian Warren may have gotten the best of Ms. Hawkins last week when she got stuck on the line: "And this is the business you invite me to join you in?" She eventually needed a prompt and then a 5 minute recess; she then came back out to resume the scene with Sir George Crofts played well, with smiling eyes and sneering voice and unctuous marriage proposal, by Mark Harelik, just as Shaw had imagined it.

I had gone to the production in the hopes of seeing Cherry Jones (photo, left,) our preeminent Shavian actress, make her usual dramatic impact on the stage, and she was as divine as anticipated, earning the applause that greeted her first entrance on stage. As Mrs. Warren, with top billing on the outside marquee, Ms. Jones was every inch the lioness and fox depicted on the tapestry hanging on her daughter's wall. Perhaps this is part of the problem with Ms. Hawkins' overall performance. Mrs. Warren's Profession is about the balanced tension between parent-child; perhaps with the casting of Cherry Jones, Vivie Warren is doomed to win the battle but lose the war from the onset.

In one scene, Vivian throws herself to the floor in despair. Such a move is not indicated in any of Shaw's very, shall we say, overly explicit stage directions. It is director Doug Hughes' interpretation, and it is certainly his prerogative, but in conveying a more fragile Vivian, we lose sight of Mrs. Warren's Vivian, a daughter who is as strong as her mother - detached and pragmatic as the numbers that she prefers to people. Miss Warren's profession is by no accident an actuarial one.

A tremendous supporting cast, that sometimes gets lost among the dueling Warrens, also includes Michael Siberry as the comical local canon, Reverend Samuel Gardner. His son Frankie is played by Adam Driver who had an endearing habit of softening his many jibes at his father with a loving touch to the shoulder. Edward Hibbert, who played Shaw's peer Oscar Wilde in Moises Kaufman's Gross Indecency, is the very decent Mr. Praed, the artist who is a luxury, an auxiliary to the business dealings of the women around which he revolves. Mr. Harelik, as I mentioned, tried bravely to rescue Ms. Hawkins during her moment; such heroics are the stuff of theatre legend.

Mrs. Warren's Profession is running through Nov. 28th at the Roundabout's American Airlines Theater.

First published on diddlyi

AndrewAndrew at PenelopePenelope

2010-10-30T06:14:00.000-07:00

As per the Druid production of Enda Walsh's new play, Penelope at St. Ann's, I leave it up to the Andrews. I don't agree with everything they say, but they are better dressers than this poor blogger.

Speaking of dresses, I'll be returning to Penelope for another look. Can't determine the color of her dress - sometimes it looks green, sometimes blue! Photos by Robert Day.

Bloomsday on the Bowery

2010-10-20T05:14:00.000-07:00

Patrick Fitzgerald's Gibraltar begins with the actor-writer hanging a picture above a marital bed. For the character of the muse, see the end of this post.

Narrator: Can you help me with this?

Muse: What exactly are we doing?

Narrator: The adaptation. Is it straight?

Muse: Just the two of us? No. That way.

Narrator: I'll do Bloom and...

Muse: ...And I'm everyone else? Back a bit. Yeah. And how are they going to know that one inute I'm your muse, the next I'm Molly, the next I'm your dead father's Hungarian ghost, next I'm the cat!

Narrator: Well. You just told them. Please?...

Who could resist such an invitation?

For the next six Mondays it will be Bloomsday - no need to wait til June 16th. Patrick Fitzgerald's Gibraltar is in residence at the Bowery Electric which is in fact on the Bowery as it's advertised.

An adaptation of Ulysses, Gibraltar is a two-person play getting to the heart, Fitzgerald's heart, of James Joyce's masterwork. As Patrick explained after the show last night, the real story in Ulysses is the one of Leopold and Molly Bloom: "I always recommend that people start Ulysses with Chapter Four, otherwise they will give up!" It may be heretical to the academic, but Patrick thinks that Stephen Daedalus just complicates a pretty good story.

Gibraltar, the birthplace of Molly Bloom, its strait the door to the Atlantic Ocean, is a project that Fitzgerald and Seymour have been working on for over two years; Terry Kinney stepped in as a consultant director one year ago, a consultant because, as Patrick explained, "he felt everything was already in place." Mr. Kinney was in the house last night, a full, young house, causing a bit of quiet theatre excitement as he greeted people. As the co-founder of Chicago's Steppenwolf, he was theatre celebrity.

No Joycean scholar here, I am a bit of a philistine when it comes to Joyce, but even I can appreciate Molly's soliloquy when it is in the hands of Cara Seymour. Her performance was quiet, poignant, understated - a new approach to a classic character.

portrait: Mark Seliger

And the winner is....the First Irish Theatre Festival 2010

2010-10-08T16:47:00.000-07:00

The month-long 1st Irish Theatre Festival 2010 wrapped up last night in lower Manhattan with an awards ceremony celebrating the hard-earned achievements of artists and producers. The event is deemed the “1st Irish,” but the festival has actually concluded its third year of being the world’s only theatre festival devoted exclusively to Irish-born playwrights.

The nominees for the usual categories of effort (actor, actress, director, etc) and the newly added Audience Award were gathered at Lillie’s on East 17th Street for succinct announcements and not-so-cursory reminiscences among friends of triumphs and “next year…”s. The new general consulate for New York City, Noel Kilkenny, was in the house as was Broadway actor Sean Mahon (left) of Conor McPherson’s wonderful The Seafarer and the hugely successful and long-running 39 Steps.

The Northern Irish Kabosh Theatre Company won Best Production for This Is What We Sang, a site-specific play which took place at the Synagogue of Performing Arts in Tribeca. The play consists of the alternating monologues of different generations in a family of Latvian Jews who settled in Belfast. It details their challenges of assimilation, and ultimate emigration, set against the backdrop of the better known Catholic-Protestant conflict. Other nominees in that category were the New York City institution of the Irish Repertory Theatre for their revival of Frank McCourt’s The Irish And How They Got That Way and Dublin’s Gúna Nua’s Absolution.

Absolution was a big winner for the evening, bringing Rachel O’Riordan the best director award for her minimalist guidance of Owen O’Neill’s one-man performance as a serial killer. Other nominees in the category were Don Creedon for The Holy Ground and Paula McFetridge for This Is What We Sang.

Owen O’Neill (pictured below, photo by Ari Mintz) was an unanimous winner for Best Actor among nominees which included The Prophet Of Monto’s Michael Mellamphy (Michael’s second nomination at this festival) and Tom O’Leary from the “Troubles”-centered Rat in the Skull. After the award ceremony, Owen O’Neill talked about coming back next year to the festival with a comedy, a welcome change from the dark, disturbing performance and subject matter of Absolution.

The Best Actress nominees were Laoisa Sexton from The Prophet of Monto, Rosie Benton from the Mint Theatre’s successful run of Wife to James Whalen and Linda Thorson for Exit/Entrance, Origin Theatre’s contribution to the Festival. The award went to Laoisa Sexton for her turn as the intermittently clairvoyant and always complex Zoe in John Paul Murphy’s Dublin play. She's pictured here with Irish Echo drama critic Joe Hurley.

Best Design went to Maruti Evans for his work on Exit/Entrance. Vicky Davis for Wife to James Whalen, the rediscovered Abbey playwright Teresa Deevy’s work, and Paul Smithyman for the Irish Arts Center’s Trans-Euro Express were nominated for Best Design as well.

The two most celebrated awards of the evening were the Audience Award, determined by online voting through the 1st Irish website, and the Judges Award, a jury-elected prize for a special contribution or vision. This year, the Judges Award acknowledged the important contribution made by the Mint Theatre in resurrecting Wife to James Whalen and generally the work of Teresa Deevey, a once-popular but mostly forgotten 20th century playwright. The Audience Award was greeted with cheers for Don Creedon who not only directed Dermot Bolger’s The Holy Ground for a Best Director nomination but also wrote and directed Guy Walked Into a Bar, which, just as it was advertised, was a site specific comedy which took place on the second floor of Ryan’s Daughter, an Upper East Side pub.

“This is one of the best nights of my life,” Don said after collecting his award. After balancing the tragedy of The Holy Ground and the comedy of Guy Walks Into A Bar, he was a winner at the Festival, and the Festival, after having hosted fifteen significant Irish plays in New York City, was a winner too, thanks to Artistic Director George Heslin (pictured below with lowly blogger).

Article originally published in Diddlyi

And the nominees are......

2010-10-04T04:18:00.000-07:00

The nominees for the 1st Irish 2010 Awards were announced last night with the winners to be declared tonight (Oct. 4th) at 7.00 pm at Lillie's Victorian Restaurant 13 East 17th Street

bet Union Sq & 5th Avenue - free event open to all

- New York's annual festival of Irish theatre -

and the nominees are...

Best Actor

Michael Mellamphy - The Prophet of Monto

Tom O'Leary - Rat in the Skull

Owen O'Neill - Absolution

Best Actress

Rosie Benton - Wife to James Whelan

Laoisa Sexton - The Prophet of Monto

Linda Thorson - Exit/Entrance

Best Director

Don Creedon - The Holy Ground

Paula McFetridge - This is What We Sang

Rachel O'Riordan - Absolution

Best Design

Vicki Davis - Wife to James Whelan

Maruti Evans - Exit/Entrance

Paul Smithyman - Trans-Euro Express

Best Production

Gúna Nua for Absolution

The Irish Repertory Theatre for The Irish and How They Got That Way

Kabosh Theatre for This is What We Sang

Judges Special Award

Audience Choice Award for Best Play 2010

Guy Walks into the Bar

The Prophet of Monto

Wife of James Whelan

Congratulations to all the nominees and everyone involved in a splendid event!

Unforgivable Sins and Absolution at 59E59

2010-09-29T06:06:00.000-07:00

photo by Ari Mintz

A quick note on the direction of Owen O'Neill's one-man show Absolution at the 59E59 Theaters (the best theatre bar in the city, but you already knew that): everything on an austere set is capable of destroying the story arc of the character.

That said, I'll leave the rest to yesterday's New Yorker (complete with umlaut). I completely agree.

Is Owen O'Neill a writer and an actor, or is he a viciously angry man who, at one point in his life, murdered child-molesting priests in a small town in Ireland? It's thrillingly hard to tell: O'Neill, sitting on a simple set at 59E59, spends seventy minutes describing his adventures as a savage avenging angel, and for audience members it's a chilling experience. sinew in his wiry body seems to vibrate as he describes - in detail, with vivid reënactments - his insane rage, both as a child being abused and as an adult doing his part to make the world a better place by torturing priests and then killing them. It's a good Irish tale - beautifully written by O'Neill, intelligent and imaginative - and it's an outstanding performance.

Absolution is part of the 1st Irish 2010 festival and a Dublin-based Gúna Nua production.

A Drama in Inish to be part of the Shaw Festival's 50th Season

2010-09-21T09:53:00.000-07:00

Taking a quick break from 1st Irish 2010, I bring you this unpaid announcement:

I know it's Ontario and not NYC, but it's hard not to be excited about what our northern neighbor does. Today, the Shaw Festival announced the line-up for its 50th season. Of particular note, it will include Lennox Robinson's A Drama in Inish which appeared at the Mint last year under a newer title: Is Life Worth Living?

Take a look. Make a visit. You'll be glad you did.

Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, September 21, 2010 . . . The 2011 Season will feature eleven diverse productions that include: Shaw re-envisioned by both directors and writers, newly commissioned works, plays by a new generation of provocative playwrights, re-explored classics and returning Festival favourites appearing on the Festival’s four Niagara-on-the-Lake stages: the Festival Theatre, the Court House Theatre, the Royal George Theatre and the new Studio Theatre.

Three plays by Shaw on three Festival stages

*Heartbreak House*	Festival Theatre
by Bernard Shaw	Previews – May 10 Opens – May 25 Closes – October 7
Directed by Christopher Newton

Bernard Shaw’s epic masterpiece returns for our 50th season. An unexpected family reunion leads to fireworks both indoors and out.

On the Rocks	Court House Theatre
by Bernard Shaw	Previews – June 14 Opens – July 8 Closes – October 8
Directed by Joseph Zeigler

Bernard Shaw’s political comedy gets a “contemporary remix” by Dora-award winning playwright Michael Healey. This re-envisioned version of Shaw’s play asks the question: when the citizens are about to revolt, what’s better — a Prime Minister with too many ideas or not enough of them?

Candida	Royal George Theatre
by Bernard Shaw	Previews – April 7 Opens – May 28 Closes – October 30
Directed by Gina Wilkinson

The delightful comedy that opened the Shaw Festival’s first season returns for the Festival’s 50^th — the classic story of a love triangle about a dutiful wife torn between her pastor husband and the ardent love of a young poet.

Two musicals: a timeless classic re-envisioned; the other a world premiere

My Fair Lady

Festival Theatre

By Frederick Loewe (music) & Alan Jay Lerner (adaptation & lyrics).

Based on Pygmalion by Bernard Shaw

Previews – April 13 Opens – May 28 Closes – October 30

Directed by Molly Smith

Making its much anticipated first appearance at the Shaw Festival, the glorious music, book and lyrics of the Lerner and Loewe musical that is based on Bernard Shaw’sPygmalion is celebrated in a fresh new vigorous production of this beloved story.

Maria Severa

Court House Theatre

Book, music & lyrics by Jay Turvey &

Paul Sportelli

Previews – July 19 Opens – August 5 Closes – September 23

Directed by Jackie Maxwell

World Premiere

A romantic new musical about the legendary Maria Severa and the birth of Fado, the Portuguese music of the street that touched the heart of a people, makes its world premiere at The Shaw.

50^th Season also features comedies, drama and a remount of the 2008 hit The President

The Admirable Crichton	Festival Theatre
by J.M. Barrie	Previews – June 22 Opens – July 9 Closes – October 29
Directed by Morris Panych

An aristocratic lord’s theories of class equality are put to the test when they are cast out of civilization and left shipwrecked on a desert island. Only their butler, the admirable Crichton knows what to do; but when they return home will this new island hierarchy survive amongst Victorian society? A hilarious social satire.

Drama at Inish – A Comedy	Court House Theatre
by Lennox Robinson	Previews – May 6 Opens – May 27 Closes – October 1
Directed by Jackie Maxwell	Canadian Premiere

Introducing a delightful Irish ensemble gem, Drama at Inish – A Comedy. When the usual visiting comedy troupe is replaced by the De La Mare Repertory Company and their serious dramatic fare, the citizens of Inish are mesmerized and transformed, with hilarious results. A play that speaks to the power of theatre.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof	Royal George Theatre
by Tennessee Williams	Previews – May 3 Opens – May 26 Closes – October 23
Directed by Eda Holmes

Mendacity and money pit Brick against Maggie the Cat and Big Daddy. The tension-laden Pulitzer Prize winning family drama brings the sultry heat of Mississippi Delta and Tennessee Williams’ rich language back to the Shaw Festival. The last Tennessee Williams work presented at the Shaw Festival was 2007’s Summer and Smoke.

Lunchtime:

The President

Royal George Theatre

by Ferenc Molnàr

Adapted by Morwyn Brebner

Previews – June 3 Opens – July 9 Closes – October 9

Directed by Blair Williams

Following audience and critical acclaim, the inspired one-act whirlwind about a bank CEO who transforms a lowly cabdriver into a suitable suitor for the girl in his charge returns to the Shaw Festival. This hilarious, must-see production was a smash hit of the 2008 season.

The exploration of provocative, subversive contemporary playwrighting continues

Topdog/Underdog	Studio Theatre
by Suzan-Lori Parks	Previews – July 19 Opens – August 6 Closes – August 27
Directed by Philip Akin	Canadian premiere
	Presented in association with Obsidian Theatre

This award-winning play by one of North America’s most thought-provoking playwrights features a dark comic portrait of two brothers, sardonically named Lincoln and Booth, their struggle to survive and their confrontation of history, family and the future. A Canadian premiere this season at the Shaw Festival.

When the Rain Stops Falling	Studio Theatre
by Andrew Bovell	Previews – August 11 Opens – August 26 Closes – September 17
Directed by Peter Hinton	Canadian premiere

Celebrated Australian playwright Andrew Bovell’s compelling generational epic When the Rain Stops Falling will make its Canadian premiere at the Shaw Festival. An epic and intimate journey that crosses two continents, spans four generations and weaves an intricate story of connections, loss and mystery begins with a son trying to reconnect with his father and a fish that falls from the sky.

Tickets for the Shaw Festival’s 50^th Season go on sale to Shaw Festival Members beginning November 6. Tickets to the general public go on sale in January. Ticket prices remain the same as 2010 and range from $23 to $30 for youth, $40 for seniors and $35 - $105 for regular tickets. Be the first in line to order tickets to The Shaw’s landmark 50^th season. Call 1-800-511-7429 to become a Member.

Wife to James Whelan, the Perfect Entrepreneur

2010-09-18T21:27:00.000-07:00

The front page of today's New York Times business section (and its most e-mailed story) reads: "Just Manic Enough: Seeking Perfect Entrepreneurs." The article discusses those character traits that make a successful entrepreneur: unsurprising traits such as risk-taking, large ambitions, excessive energy, characteristics that make for success at business, not necessarily the personal life. Irish playwright Teresa Deevy in her play Wife to James Whelan features one of those perfect entrepreneurs, and the playwright charts out Whelan's determined plans to first get out of the small town of Kilbeggan and then to return in triumph. It is a story of the determined businessman and the women who orbit him in a time of dock workers and farmers, a 1930s play with a most modern sensibility.

There have been many rave reviews of the production, no need to recapitulate here, just suffice it to say it is obvious from the play why Teresea Deevy was called the "Irish Chekov." A seemingly simple plot about who will be the wife of James Whelan, the play is full of sophisticated temperaments, "subtle characters" as director Jonathan Bank described to me after the show Saturday. No one is pining for Moscow but these characters have a humanity and dimension that elevate the story beyond the ready categorization of a rags to riches story. Any one character (except perhaps Katie played by Rosie Benton) is capable of cruelty or kindness at any given moment - just like real life whether in Kilbeggan or Manhattan.

Like real life, endings are not tidy here. What will happen to some of these characters, you wonder? What will happen to the sympathetic and steady Tom? Played by Aiden Redmond who was so menacing in last year's Blood Guilty, part of 1st Irish 2009, Tom goes through a bit of a character arc of his own, even as a supporting player in James Whalen's ascendancy. He stoically notes that "kindhearted is not what women want." But it is what the audience wants - a happy ending for Tom and for Kate, for that matter. Deevy, like another one of her heroes, George Bernard Shaw, has no intention on giving the audience just what they want.

This is my first Terese Deevy play, and my delight is echoed in a recent Lenny Lopate interview with Jonathan, artistic director at the Mint as well as director of this production, the first of two Deevy plays this year. He is joined by the sparkling Janie Brookshire (pictured above) who plays Nan Bowers (not Nan Moran as Lenny says.) No matter what the character's name, to quote a Mint usher (and don't ushers know best?!), Ms. Brookshire will be a superstar someday.

Wife to James Whelan runs through October 3rd. Cast also includes Jeremy S. Holm (Bill McGafferty), Rosie Benton (Kate Moran), Shawn Fagan (James Whelan) pictured above, Thomas Matthew Kelley (Jack McClinsey), Jon Fletcher (Apollo Moran), Liv Rooth (Nora Keane). Photo/Sara Krulwich

Darragh Martin's Tir na nÓg: Always Disco Night and the Mascara Never Smudges

2010-09-17T08:15:00.000-07:00

"It started with a flash of fire and air

A bloom of orange

Pitch-ditched into black.

And then dark drank deep

And waited."

Dublin playwright Darragh Martin starts his mythological history of Ireland at the beginning, in the manner of "...and there was light." But no heavy Old Testament lifting here, Martin's stories are full of whimsy. There are puppets after all, lots of them, all kinds, all sizes, all shapes including an orange juice carton.

Structured around the story of the Children of Lir who were cursed by a jealous stepmother (always with the evil stepmom no matter what language!) to travel Ireland as swans for 900 years, The Map of Lost Things, directed by Mr. Martin, features some of our favorite Irish superheroes: Fionn mac Cumhaill, otherwise knows as Finn McCool, the ubiquitous nomenclature of the local Irish pub, and Cuchulainn who lamentably falls far behind in his deserved quota of bars.

Sometimes wistful, sometimes snarky, always beautifully written, Martin's stories are from a most traditional source, but he takes a most modern storytelling approach. My favorite is the story of Oisín for whom perfection, Tir na nÓg or the Land of Eternal Youth, just isn't enough. He has to go back to Ireland. Isn't that just so typical?

"There was something magical about Tír na nÓg. Nobody ever got old or sick. There was no mortgage repayments or beeping alarmclocks, no need for cataracts or zimmerframes. In many ways it was perfect. But some nights something rustled under Oisín's skin, awoke him beside his always perfectly sleeping wife."

Presented by the invisible company, the cast and crew were dynamic during last night's opening night, fully embodying the exuberance of those beautiful young things of the ancient Celtic legends. The company presents two special children's matinees on the 18th and 25th @ 3 p.m. at the Performance Space 122 although the "non-children" version, admittedly much longer, is only two swear words and one adult situation away from being suitable for everyone.

For more background on the stories presented, check out the theatre company's website here. Live music is by Rosie Du Pont (also an appropriately overly dramatic Deirdre of the Sorrows), Arla Berman (also Fionnuala who grows up after 900 years as a swan to get her masters in library science), and Colin Cotter (fiddle/guitar). Remaining cast: Courtney D. Ellis (Aoife & others), Ryan Good (Lir & others), Hilary Hanson (Niamh & others), Logan McCoy (Connla & others), Latey Parker (Medb & others), Fergus Scully (Aodh & others), Evan Sokal (Conchobar & others), David Speer (Fiachra & others) with Minou Arjomand (co-director).

You Killed It Tonight: Ardnaglass on the Air and The Holy Ground

2010-09-16T06:21:00.000-07:00

"All the things people kill for. Money and God and countries. I killed for companionship, can you not understand? Those rough women in prison, they didn't frighten me any longer. Four of us crammed in a cell, at least they would have to talk to me." - Monica in Dermot Bolger's The Holy Ground.

Serendipity is an overused word, overused to the point of cliché and then beyond - the title for an unfortunate John Cusack movie. But it was nothing but happy circumstance to have Katherine O'Sullivan and Aedin Moloney in the same theatre last night. Katherine as the Widow Hurley in Dermot Bolger's one act monologue, The Holy Ground, and Aedin in the audience supporting her former castmate from Cell, a entry in last year's 1st Irish where she played one of those rough women in prison that Monica Hurley naively wishes for a friend.

Ms. O'Sullivan, 1st Irish best actress nominee last year from that role in Cell, now plays a recent widow, cleaning up her husband's possessions and lamenting a lonely, isolated life past and future. The above quote describes just how alone the character was in a long and loveless marriage: so alone, she could have killed her husband just for the companionship of having cellmates. Ms. Moloney was that cellmate last year in Paula Meehan's play about a women's prison. Maybe not so great a companion - within the context of the play, of course. Joe Hurley, from the Irish Echo, shared that people were afraid to meet Ms. Moloney after seeing Cell. Afraid of the character - wary of the actress.

Nothing to be afraid of, Ms. Moloney was charming and gracious. After having caught Ms. O'Sullivan's poignant performance, Aedin and I had a good laugh over the parallelism between Cell and The Holy Ground, a good laugh about two not particularly funny plays. She is now off to Paris to inhabit Eva the Chaste, Barbara Hammond's play. More info here.

Running in tandem with The Holy Ground at the Manhattan Theatre Source is Ardnaglass on the Air, a Hamm & Clov production, written and performed by Jimmy Kerr. He is accompanied by Jo Kinsella and Jonathan Judge-Russo. A farce about a radio show in rural Ardnaglass, Northern Ireland, it is reminiscent of a previous Ireland, a farming Ireland, a pre-post-Celtic Tiger Ireland. The radio show features parish announcements, agricultural news, weather and commercial spots such as "O'Neal's Bar, Butcher, Bed and Breakfast and Undertakers, serving all your drinking, eating, sleeping and dying needs." Ms. Kinsella, in particular, was joyful in championing the broad comedy.

The directorial debut of Geraldine Hughes (of Rocky Balboa fame, but my favorite was Brian Friel's Translations with a little of Bryan Delaney's The Onion Game thrown in), Ardnaglass on the Air is running through September 25th. The Holy Ground runs through September 25th as well.

The Irish and How They Got That Way; Ed Malone And How He Got That Way

2010-09-14T08:25:00.000-07:00

Besides the fact that two productions are part of the 1st Irish 2010, the common thread between Frank McCourt's The Irish and How They Got That Way and Ed Malone's Three Irish Widows vs. The World at Stage Left Studio is...drumroll.... St. Bono. But then again, maybe all contemporary Irish theatre has the U2 frontman as an axis of energy.

The Irish and How They Got That Way finished its recent, sold out Sunday matinee with a rousing rendition of "Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For." But the Irish Rep certainly has found what it's looking for. Directed by Charlotte Moore, this musical revue, a two hour history lesson on most things Irish and Irish-American, from the famine to Joshua Tree, is in its fourth revival to good reviews, strong ticket sales and enthusiastic audiences. Ciarán Sheehan, pictured above, is one of the original cast members from 2001, and as always, is exactly what anyone, who wants to hear an Irish tenor, is looking for. Kelly Conte, a lovely soprano, is delightful as well. The cast also features Terry Donnelly, also part of the original cast and a indispensable part of NYC's Irish Theatre scene, Gary Troy, Kevin B. Winebold on piano, and Patrick Shields on fiddle complete the cast. Just how Scottish the origins of "Danny Boy" are doesn't matter a bit when Mr. Sheehan sings about the Irish.

Ed Malone's Three Irish Widows verus The Rest of The World is a one-man show about Mr. Malone's mother and her two sisters, their widowhood and their subsequent travels, and more than a bit about how he hasn't found what he's looking for, but maybe a monologue will help. Among a myriad, sometimes surreal pop culture references that buoy up the monologue, the actor refers to U2's most recent cd, No Line On the Horizon. Judging by Malone's subject matter, there's no line, no boundary, he won't cross - on the horizon or right in front of the audience. The show runs through Sept. 17th at Stage Left Studio.

As I write this, U2's "Magnificent" is swelling over WFUV from Fordham University where they once graced the front steps of a magnificent gothic building in a free concert for the students. That this song is now on the radio, a coincidence? I don't think so. It's just "Another Day" in Bono-land, and I'm going back now to the "City of Blinding Lights" to see more 1st Irish.