'The Weir:' Kudos to the Irish Rep For This First-Rate Revival

Playwright Conor McPherson has a way with the supernatural.  Ghosts, faeries, and even the Prince of Darkness inhabit his works. I’ve got to say, though, that I’ve never been fully engaged by these stories, resisting the call to suspend my disbelief against the Twilight Zone-iness of it all.

Until now, that is, thanks to the Irish Rep’s splendid revival of McPherson’s The Weir, directed most masterfully by Ciarán O'Reilly and performed by a rock solid company of actors. 

There are two reasons for my embracing of The Weir, and for my touting it here as among the best productions I’ve seen during the 2012-13 theater season.    

The first has to do with the play itself.  Admittedly, a one-sentence description makes it sound pretty lame:  five characters in an Irish pub take turns telling scary tales around the wood-burning stove (a stand-in, of course, for the requisite campfire).  

What makes these tales effectively chilling, however, is that no one—neither the characters nor the audience—is obliged to take them at face value, something that is not true of the more recent Shining City and The Seafarer, where ghosts and Satan himself are part of the dramatis personae. 

The stories in The Weir, for all their folklore origins, are manifestations of the loneliness and isolation that are rife in the forsaken rural area of Ireland where the characters all live.

 

Four of the pub's habitués are men who have known each other forever, and their drink-lubricated conversations are  comprised of what are undoubtedly well-worn rituals of idle chitchat, gossip, and baiting.  It is the presence of the fifth person, a stranger and a woman to boot, that changes the tone of the evening and gradually sets the scene for the stories of disturbing brushes with the netherworld. 

From a playwriting perspective, McPherson has done a beautiful job of building up the underlying sense of anxiety, tedium, and loneliness faced by the pub’s owner Brenden (Billy Carter) and two of the regulars, the cantankerous Jack (Dan Butler), and Jack’s handyman assistant Jim (John Keating).  

Also on the scene is the more affluent and somewhat pompous businessman, Finbar (Sean Gormley), the only one of the men who is married and does not have to return to an empty home.  It is Finbar who brings the newly arrived Valerie (Tessa Klein) with him to the pub, setting tongues wagging in speculation about his motives.

Each of these characters takes a turn at center stage, and whatever tensions that might exist among them, their stories and accompanying moments of vulnerability are treated with great respect by the others.   And, glory be, if it isn’t the stranger among them whose own heartbreaking tale gets all of the men to set aside their blarney and listen in silent awe. 

I did say there were two reasons to admire this production.  The second has to do with the attention to detail that has gone into the directing and the acting. Every moment feels right, from the early awkwardness of the conversations before drinks have loosened tongues, to the roughhousing among the men and their later efforts to behave like gentlemen in front of Valerie, to the way in which the others react to Valerie’s asking for white wine in this pints-and-whiskey pub. 

As you watch the play unfold, you can tell these are not natural comrades, but you can nonetheless see why it is they come together.  They seek companionship and a bit of liquid courage to stave off the encroaching darkness. The tasks of the day may successfully mask incipient dread, but the nights are long indeed.

 

Long ago, I spent many hours of my misspent youth at a tavern where, over the entrance, there hung a sign reading “Where Strangers Meet Friends.”  By the time Brenden put out the lights and the parties exited for the night, that is exactly the feeling the production had engendered. 

 

Kudos to all who have brought The Weir to life on the intimate stage of the Irish Rep.  In addition to the cast and director, I would like to tip my hat to Charlie Corcoran for his perfect set design, and to Drew Levy for the sound design that incorporates a background of desolate winds that add immeasurably to the atmosphere.  

Bravo, and may the road rise to meet you!

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‘Superman,’ ‘Donnybrook,’ and ‘Happy Birthday': Splendid Revivals Brighten A Lackluster Season

While we are waiting for the damp wood of the 2012-2013 theater season to catch fire, I would like to send a shout-out to a trio of delightful shows from the past that are currently on tap in revivals.

The first of these, It’s A Bird…It’s A Plane…It’s Superman!, unfortunately ends tonight at City Center after a brief but glorious run as part of the Encores! series of semi-staged presentations of seldom-seen musicals.

An Encores! show is not always a sure bet; sometimes there is a very good reason why a musical has pretty much disappeared since it originally saw the light of day.  But when everything comes together—as has happened with this mounting of Superman—the result is a feast for the famished musical theater-goer.

If you are reading this, it is likely you are aware of the praise that has been heaped upon Superman, with music by Charles Strouse and lyrics by Lee Adams.  I can only add my own voice to the glowing reviews, along with the hope that this show will find a post-Encores! life elsewhere, possibly at an Off Broadway house.  One sign of hope:  Sitting two rows in front of me was Hal Prince, who had directed the original.  Might he be thinking of making another go of it? 

The decade of the 1960s was a busy time for the team of Strouse and Adams, with Bye Bye Birdie (1960) and Golden Boy (1964), both of which had successful runs (607 and 568 performances, respectively), as well as the problematic All American (1962, 80 performances) and It’s A Bird…It’s A Plane…It’s Superman! (1966, 129 performances).

Superman was generally well received by the critics at the time, and it garnered Tony nominations for three of its cast members, but it simply did not catch on.

Others who are better at 20-20 hindsight than I have speculated that the show, based as it was on a comic book, was not clear as to whether its target audience was children or grownups.  However, Broadway had already seen a successful production of Li’l Abner a decade earlier, and  Annie and Spider-Man:  Turn Off The Dark would not have trouble finding audiences down the road. So, Superman's lack of success remains a mystery.

As it happens, I saw the 1966 Superman and enjoyed it immensely.  The original cast recording has been a favorite ever since—due in no small part to the wonderful and intricate orchestrations by Eddie Sauter.  Sauter had been the musical arranger for Benny Goodman and also orchestrated a number of Broadway shows, including another of my favorites, The Apple Tree, which appeared the same year as Superman. 

Whatever else you get from an Encores! event, you are guaranteed a full orchestra, playing the original orchestrations.  And with Superman, the orchestra, under the direction of Rob Berman, has never sounded better. 

But the joys to be found in this production did not begin and end with the orchestra.  Everything came together like magic.  The cast was uniformly strong, starting with Edward Watts and Jenny Powers in the lead roles of Superman/Clark Kent and Lois Lane, and Will Swenson and David Pittu as the chief villains.  Mr. Pittu was marvelous in the role of the resentful ten-time Nobel prize-losing physicist, and when he and Mr. Swenson performed their duet, “You’ve Got What I Need,” in front of a curtain of shimmering streamers, it was pure comic bliss.  I don’t remember seeing such a grand pas de deux between two men since Harvey Fierstein and Dick Latessa tripped the light fantastic in Hairspray. 

Kudos to director John Rando, and, indeed, to everyone involved.  Everything from the bright comic book set design (John Lee Beatty is identified as the scenic consultant), to the lighting (Ken Billington), to the costumes (Paul Tazewell), to the just-right ‘60s-style choreography (Joshua Bergasse) was spot-on perfection.

Encores! shows are produced with very limited rehearsal time and a very tight budget.  One expects to see cast members clutching and referring to their scripts, and, even occasionally dropping a lyric or missing a note.  I saw Superman at its very first public performance, an invited dress rehearsal, and there was not a script to be seen or miscue to be heard.  Indeed, at the very end, Mr. Watts celebrated on behalf of the entire cast by grabbing a half dozen copies of the script and tossing them into the air in a well-earned gesture of triumph.

This is one Encores! show that deserves an encore.

                         ****************

Even if you missed Superman during its short run, you still have time to catch two other shows from the past that are having impressive revivals.

Dee-lightful is the word for The Irish Rep’s presentation of the 1961 Johnny Burke musical, Donnybrook!, which, like Superman, has lived on via its original cast recording.  Thanks to director Charlotte Moore;  to James Noone, a miracle worker of a set designer, who has done amazing things with the postage stamp of a stage; and to solid performances by a talented ensemble of actors.  Donnybrook! is a charmer of a show.

Finally, I’d like to call attention to another wonderful revival, Happy Birthday, written by Anita Loos and originally seen on Broadway in 1946.  TACT/The Actors Company Theatre, is offering up a first-rate production of this romantic comedy about a demure librarian (a splendid Mary Bacon) who lets down her hair and finds the man of her dreams at the friendliest bar this side of Cheers.  

As is true of Superman and Donnybrook, the production of Happy Birthday (now on view at Theatre Row's Beckett Theatre) represents a labor of love by all involved—from the great set design, to the period music, to the direction, to every one of the performances.  Hats off to TACT, which last year gave us a top-notch revival of Neil Simon’s Lost In Yonkers, for putting together another winner.   

So here’s a question for all of you Broadway nabobs out there.  If Encores! and The Irish Rep and TACT can manage to put on first-class shows on shoestring budgets, why on earth has this been such a lackluster season on the Great White Way???  Just wondering.


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Attend the Tale of Sweeney

Brian Friel’s 1993 play Molly Sweeney, now in revival in a very well acted but purposefully distancing production at the Irish Rep, is a cautionary tale about the importance of being careful what you wish for—or, in this case, being pressured into believing that you want what others wish for you.

Think of Molly Sweeney as the flip side of A Small Fire, by Adam Bock (currently on view at Playwright’s Horizons), in which the life of a middle-aged woman is turned upside-down when she suffers the consequences of the loss of her senses. 

In Molly Sweeney, the life of a middle-aged woman is turned upside-down when she suffers the consequences of the regaining of her sense of sight after being unable to see since the age of 10 months.  

Friel, the highly regarded creator of such plays as Philadelphia Here I Come and Dancing at Lughnasa, is a terrific storyteller, something that is both a strength and a dramatic problem with Molly Sweeney. 

The play is presented not as a drama, but as a narrative in the form of alternating monologues by three characters:  Molly, her husband Frank, and Mr. Rice, the physician who partially restores Molly’s sight.  Through these monologues, Friel paints a rich portrait of each of the characters, but because there is no interaction among them, the play—despite the very touching story it relates—has a clinical feel to it, like reading one of those medical case study puzzlers in The New York Times Magazine. 

We learn that Molly has never had much interest in having her sight restored.  She has never felt herself to be deprived or particularly disabled.  She long ago learned to compensate through a heightened reliance on her other senses.  She is very independent, has lots of friends, holds down a successful job as a message therapist, and seems to be well adjusted and reasonably happy. 

It is Frank, her unemployed “tree hugger” of a husband, who convinces Molly to seek a medical solution to her blindness.  He has immersed himself in the medical literature and is convinced that, because Molly was not born blind, there is a good chance that her sight can be restored through surgery.  And if it doesn’t work, he asks rhetorically, what has she got to lose?

Into the scene steps the third character, Mr. Rice, the down-at-the-heels ophthalmologist who longs to return to the days when he was part of a small group of wunderkinds  in his field. He decides there’s no harm in giving it a shot.  After all, he asks rhetorically, what has she got to lose?

Inevitably, it turns out that Molly has much to lose, and it is that loss that gives the play its emotional resonance.  It is here that the monologues work best by saving us from any sentimentality or mawkishness that might otherwise intrude.  

The play, as performed on the bare bones postage-stamp of a stage at the Irish Rep, is blessed with strong performances by all three actors:  Geraldine Hughes as Molly, Jonathan Hogan as Mr. Rice, and the Rep’s multitalented managing director and actor Ciarán O'Reilly as Frank.  All of the actors, under the guidance of director Charlotte Moore, give us distinct and interesting characters to consider, but go understanding that as an audience member, you will have  only your sense of hearing  to inform you.  You will truly have to attend this tale of Sweeney in order to fully appreciate Brian’s Friel’s craftsmanship.

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