Máire Sullivan (Marie Mullen) glows in the bask of postcoital sex in The Saviour (photo by Carol Rosegg)
THE SAVIOUR
Irish Repertory Theatre, Francis J. Greenburger Mainstage
132 West 22nd St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through August 13, $50-$90
212-727-2737
irishrep.org
The first half of the world stage premiere of Deirdre Kinahan’s The Saviour at the Irish Rep is gorgeous. On the morning of her sixty-seventh birthday, Máire (Marie Mullen) is basking in the glow of having had sex with a much younger man the night before. Lying in bed with a cigarette, the widowed mother and grandmother, during a long monologue to Jesus, says, “Get a grip on yourself, Máire Sullivan! I can hear you say that, Jesus. And you’re right. Do you know you’re right . . . I’m acting ridiculous. At my age! I hope you’re not getting all jealous now or anything? Are you, Jesus?”
But when a man (Jamie O’Neill) arrives, the play takes a decidedly different tack, one that raises several important issues but also turns its back on what had come before.
A devout Irish Catholic, Máire is in her glory after “heaving and shunting” with Martin. She is explaining herself to Jesus, hoping her lord and savior understands her new feelings. “Sex has always been a means to an end. Foisted on me when I didn’t want it or offered for a bit of peace,” she says. Barefoot and in a long white nightgown (the costumes are by Joan O’Clery), Máire gets up and walks over to her night table, putting on makeup and fixing her hair; there is actually no glass in the mirrors she is using, so we can see her in a frame as she gussies herself up. “I mean, I didn’t even know that sex was possible at my age,” she tells Jesus.
Waiting for Martin to come upstairs with breakfast and coffee, she shares scenes from her hardscrabble life. Her mother died when she was young, so her father, who found work in England, sent her off to the Magdalene Laundries, Irish sweatshops operated by nuns that were primarily a place to hide and punish pregnant teenagers.
“In the convent in Stanhope Street you gave your name away at the door,” she sadly recalls. “And I don’t think Daddy knew that when he put me in there. . . . Stanhope Street wasn’t really a school. A reformatory for whores and hussies! But I wasn’t one of them. Was I? No. I was good,” she says unsurely, as if having to convince herself.
She is haunted by the experience, remembering, “You didn’t ask any questions of the silence. Because we worked in silence. Lived in silence. Silence was our penance . . . for being orphaned girls. Forgotten girls. Bad girls. Or just . . . girls.”
But mostly, she is anticipating Martin coming upstairs and showering her with yet more attention — and sex. But that’s not quite what she has in store for her birthday.
Máire (Marie Mullen) and an unexpected figure (Jamie O’Neill) face some hard truths in The Saviour (photo by Carol Rosegg)
Ciarán Bagnall’s set is a slightly elevated turntable that revolves between the creaky bedroom, highlighted by a cross high on one wall, and the kitchen, with an open space stage right. Bagnall’s lighting and Aoife Kavanagh’s sound turn eerie whenever Máire drifts back into her memories of Stanhope Street, when the show briefly becomes a ghost story.
I cannot begin to tell you how uplifting it was to watch an actress of a certain age portray a woman who is euphoric about having had sex. Tony winner Mullen (The Beauty Queen of Leenane, The Gifts You Gave to the Dark) radiates as Máire details some of the events of the previous night, and the audience celebrates along with her as she carefully brushes her hair and shuffles around the bedroom, animated by this new lease on life, suddenly filled with hope and promise.
But Kinahan (Embargo, Halcyon Days) and director Louise Lowe (The Book of Names, The Party to End All Parties) then pull the rug out from under everyone’s feet when the visitor, ably played by O’Neill (Staging the Treaty, Luck Just Kissed You Hello), starts sharing some difficult truths about Máire, going all the way back to when she was raising her children. The Saviour abruptly becomes an issue play bringing up controversial topics instead of being about an older woman experiencing a positive life change. In addition, it grows repetitive, covering the same angles multiple times.
I felt like it was a kind of theatrical bait-and-switch; it might be my own fault for wanting the play to go in another direction, but, a week later, I still feel let down and betrayed. Perhaps I was so invested in Máire’s exhilaration that I didn’t want anything to get in the way of my enjoyment of that reaction. I can’t help but wonder whether it would have been so bad to have an older, decidedly unglamorous character simply enjoy sex in a show for a full seventy minutes.
But if anything, The Saviour, originally produced online during the pandemic in June 2021, is a distinctly Irish tale, one that delves into family, religion, and societal ills in which happy endings are far from guaranteed.