Tony nominee Robert Cuccioli stars as a tavern owner tortured by what he thinks could have been in A Touch of the Poet (photo courtesy Irish Rep)
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Saturday, October 31, free with RSVP (suggested donation $25), 3:00 & 8:00
Sunday, November 1, free with RSVP (suggested donation $25), 3:00
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The Irish Rep was four weeks into rehearsal for its spring revival of Eugene O’Neill’s A Touch of the Poet when the pandemic lockdown shuttered theaters across the city. Since the coronavirus hit, the Manhattan-based troupe has emerged as perhaps the most successful in the country at creating unique and innovative virtual productions, which it calls “performances on screen.” For A Touch of the Poet, the troupe was able to ship Alejo Vietti’s costumes to wherever the actors were sheltering in place, from New York and New Jersey to South Dakota, Tennessee, and Berlin, as well as use Robert Charles Vallance’s hair and wig design, Joe Dulude’s makeup, Ryan Rumery’s original music, and even Charlie Corcoran’s set. The original in-person production credits list fight direction by Rick Sordolet, which would seem impossible to replicate in an online presentation in which no two actors are in the same room and possibly not even in the same state or country. Yet there are several convincing instances of physical confrontations in the show, a tribute to how far the Irish Rep has taken its virtual expertise, pushing the envelope well beyond actors reading their lines in little Zoom boxes from their living rooms or kitchens. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)
In July, the Irish Rep put on Conor McPherson’s The Weir, which takes place in a pub where several characters tell ghost stories; the actors stood in front of photographed backgrounds that made it seem as if they were all together, though never in the same shot, even as they pass glasses of beer and whiskey to each other. The company takes it to the next level in A Touch of the Poet; not only does it use images of Corcoran’s set, which had already been built in the its West Twenty-Second St. home, but director and Irish Rep cofounder Ciarán O’Reilly and video editor Sarah Nichols, who served in the same capacities for The Weir, have worked magic in Poet, making it appear that the actors are not only in the same tavern but sit at the same table and, yes, engage in a fight or two. There’s also a door a few characters go through that leads to the bar.
The Irish Rep pushes the boundaries of virtual theater in its adaptation of Eugene O’Neill’s A Touch of the Poet (photo courtesy Irish Rep)
Originally meant to kick off a nine-play cycle, Poet is not one of O’Neill’s finest hours — or in this case, two hours and forty minutes, which is an uncomfortable amount of time to be sitting in front of your computer watching a dour drama. There’s way too much exposition at the beginning, there’s repetition galore, and it takes too long for the obvious parts of the plot to unfold. Still, you’ll be glued to the monitor because of the solid acting and technical innovation.
The play is set in 1828 in a Boston tavern owned and operated by the Melody family (pronounced mell-OH-dee), who emigrated from Ireland many years before. Cornelious “Con” Melody (Tony nominee Robert Cuccioli) is a mean-spirited drunk living in the past, reveling in his heroism at the Battle of Talavera in July 1809 during the Peninsular War between Spain and Portugal. He blames his wife, Nora (Kate Forbes), for trapping him into marriage by getting pregnant on purpose, and he shows no love for the result of that union, their daughter, Sara (Belle Aykroyd). While Con drinks, complains, and spends their food and rent money on his treasured mare, Nora runs the tavern and reaffirms her undying affection for him, and Sara dreams of a better life, perhaps with Simon Hartford, a young man who lives nearby amid nature. A Thoreau-like figure from a wealthy family, Simon is currently in a room upstairs at the tavern because of an illness, and Sara is taking care of him. His mother (Mary McCann) makes a surprise visit to check out the Melody clan, and it goes pretty much how one would expect. But Con is more attuned to the upcoming Talavera reunion scheduled for that evening, when he can put on his uniform and revel in past glory.
Belle Aykroyd and Kate Forbes star as daughter and mother in Irish Rep “performance on screen” (photo courtesy Irish Rep)
The mostly fine cast, led by a terrific Forbes, also features Andy Murray as Con’s best friend, Jamie Cregan; John C. Vennema as Nicholas Gadsby; and Ciaran Byrne, David O’Hara, and David Sitler as a trio of barflies buzzing around for free drinks. (The 1977 Broadway production starred Geraldine Fitzgerald, Milo O’Shea, Kathryn Walker, and a Tony-nominated Jason Robards, while Timothy Dalton and Vanessa Redgrave were in a 1988 adaptation in London, and Gabriel Byrne, Emily Bergl, Byron Jennings, and O’Reilly appeared in a 2005 version at Studio 54. O’Neill wrote a sequel called More Stately Mansions; neither work was performed during his lifetime.) There are some clunky video cuts, mostly when switching to single shots of a character in the midst of a conversation with another, but otherwise the Irish Rep has come the closest during the Covid-19 crisis to capturing the feeling of seeing a stage performance in real life. The company’s next “performance in screen” (that’s not a typo) will be Bill Irwin’s one-man show, On Beckett, which should not have the same logistical complications as The Weir and A Touch of the Poet.