Donall (David Mitchell) and Tiffany (Olivia Horton) wonder what could have been in THE COMPASS ROSE (photo by Steven Schreiber)
Ryan’s Daughter
350 East 85th St. between First & Second Aves.
Thursday – Sunday through September 29, $18
212-868-4444
www.fatviolettheater.com
www.1stirish.org
Two lonely souls look back at what might have been in Ronan Noone’s sensitively drawn two-character drama The Compass Rose. The site-specific seventy-minute play takes place in the upstairs pub at Ryan’s Daughter on the Upper East Side, doubling for the Compass Rose on Martha’s Vineyard, as the audience sits at small tables, on stools, or on chairs at the bar. (Drinks are available before and after the show but not during it.) The story begins as Tiffany (Olivia Horton) walks into the Compass Rose, surprising the bartender, Donal (David Mitchell). “What are you doing here?” he says with a combination of anger and trepidation. The play shifts between the present and ten years in the past, when a free-spirited Tiffany invites Donal to accompany her on a cross-country trip to San Francisco, merely for company because her father does not want her to drive so far by herself. Each has a significant other, and they are not interested in starting a relationship, something Tiffany makes clear immediately, and repeatedly. But as they journey through Maine, New York City, Washington, DC, Tennessee, Texas, Las Vegas, and other locations, they share intimate secrets, tell lies, and get to know each other better than they ever thought possible.
The time shifts occur instantaneously, signaled by the blink of an eye, a shift of a body, or the movement of sunglasses. It’s a bit jarring at first but ends up working smoothly as the play, directed by David Sullivan, goes on and the changes in time and place more clearly relate to elements of the story. Mitchell (Fair City) and Horton (Tiny Dynamite) have an alluring chemistry that builds to a sizzle, his character dark, moody, cynical, and brooding, hers flirtatious, idealistic, and sometimes brutally cold. They walk all around the bar, stopping right next to members of the audience, but they are careful never to make eye contact with anyone, maintaining the invisible wall between performer and viewer. The natural setting is enhanced by noises going on outside; the night we attended, there was a whole lot of horn blowing from cars on the street, but it had no effect on the actors and added an extra dose of reality to the proceedings. A tender-hearted, insightful, and involving play about, as Donal says, “creating your own myth,” The Compass Rose continues at Ryan’s Daughter through September 29 as part of Origin’s annual 1st Irish Theatre Festival, which also includes The Life & Sort of Death of Eric Argyle and I Can See Clearly Now at 59E59 and McGoldrick’s Thread, The Morons, and A Lady Is Waiting at the Cell in addition to other special music, poetry, and theatrical events.