Tag Archives: Terry Donnelly

THE FRIEL PROJECT: PHILADELPHIA, HERE I COME!

Gar is portrayed by two actors (A. J. Shively and David McElwee) in third Irish Rep adaptation of Brian Friel play (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

PHILADELPHIA, HERE I COME!
Irish Repertory Theatre, Francis J. Greenburger Mainstage
132 West Twenty-Second St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Wednesday – Sunday through May 5, $60-$125
212-727-2737
irishrep.org

In January, I wrote that the Irish Rep’s second production in its Friel Project, Aristocrats, the follow-up to Translations, was another example of “what it does best, an exquisite revival of a superb Irish drama.” The same can be said for the third of its four-play celebration, an intimate and powerful staging of Irish dramatist Brian Friel’s 1964 international breakthrough, Philadelphia, Here I Come!

Previously presented by the company in 1990 and 2005, Philadelphia, Here I Come! takes place over the course of one night, as twenty-five-year-old Gareth Mary O’Donnell prepares to leave his hometown of Ballybeg in Ireland for a new life in America, moving in with his aunt Lizzy (Deirdre Madigan) and uncle Con (Ciaran Byrne) in Philadelphia. Gar, as he’s known, is ingeniously portrayed by two actors: David McElwee is the Public Gar, a tightly wound man incapable of speaking up for his wants and desires, described by Friel as “the Gar that people see, talk to, and talk about,” while A. J. Shively is the Private Gar, an exuberant soul aching to enjoy life’s endless pleasures, who the playwright calls “the unseen man, the man within, the conscience.” The two are side by side the entire two-hour play (plus intermission), singing and dancing, hovering behind other characters, and packing a ratty old suitcase that has to be sealed shut with rope.

Gar works for his father, S.B. (Ciarán O’Reilly), who Private Gar calls Screwballs, selling dry goods, hardware, dehydrated fish, and other disparate items. Both men are haunted by the death of Gar’s mother, Maire, who passed away three days after Gar was born. S.B. is dour and guarded, rarely saying anything of interest, barely even looking at Gar and their longtime housekeeper, Madge (Terry Donnelly). Dressed in black, as if in perpetual mourning, he sits at the small kitchen table drinking tea, reading the paper, and going back and forth between the house and the store to check on things, avoiding at all costs the topic of his son’s imminent departure.

“He’ll have something to say . . . you’ll see. And maybe he’ll slip you a couple of extra pounds,” Madge tells Gar, who responds, “Whether he says good-bye to me or not, or whether he slips me a few miserable quid or not, it’s a matter of total indifference to me, Madge.”

Meanwhile, Gar is trying to convince himself that he’s made the right choice, having previously been too frightened to ask his father for fair wages or to fight for the woman he loves, Katie Doogan (Clare O’Malley). He’s even unsure of just how close he really is with his drinking buddies, Tom (Tim Palmer), Ned (James Russell), and Joe (Emmet Earl Smith).

S. B. O’Donnell (Ciarán O’Reilly) doesn’t have much to say in Philadelphia, Here I Come! (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

Private Gar: You are full conscious of all the consequences of your decision?
Public Gar: Yessir.
Private: Of leaving the country of your birth, the land of the curlew and the snipe, the Aran sweater and the Irish Sweepstakes?
Public: I . . . I . . . I . . . I have considered all these, sir.
Private: Of going to a profane, irreligious, pagan country of gross materialism?
Public: I am fully sensitive to this, sir.
Private: Where the devil himself holds sway, and lust . . . abhorrent lust is everywhere indulged in shamelessly?
Public: Shamelessly, sir, shamelessly.
Private: And yet you persist in exposing yourself to these frightful dangers?

They are then interrupted by the sensible Madge, who chides, as if she can see and hear both of them, “Oh! You put the heart across me there! Will you quit eejiting about!”

But Gar can’t stop eejiting about as the hour of his emigration approaches.

Part of the Irish Rep’s thirty-fifth anniversary, Philadelphia, Here I Come! takes its name from the 1921 song “California, Here I Come,” in which Al Jolson, in the Broadway musical Bombo, declares, “California, I’ve been blue / Since I’ve been away from you . . . California, here I come / Right back where I started from.” California has always been the land of opportunity, where anyone has the possibility of striking it rich, from gold mining to Hollywood dreaming. Gar might be thinking the same thing about Philadelphia, but there’s an ominous undertone throughout that not only asks whether Gar will actually leave but wonders if he will eventually end up right back where he started from, as if his potential escape is doomed by the old baggage the Irish seem fated to carry.

Katie Doogan (Clare O’Malley) discusses her prospects with her father, a senator (Ciaran Byrne), in Friel revival (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

Irish Rep founding producing director O’Reilly knows this play well, and it shows in this outstanding production. O’Reilly played Private Gar in the 1990 version and directed the 2005 revival; he helms the current iteration with a gentle grace, and he plays S.B. with a quiet loneliness. Like his son, S.B. is unable to share his thoughts, which he keeps bottled up; at one point, after Gar leaves the table, S.B. returns to reading his paper, but it is upside down, a hint that he cares more than he is letting on.

Shively (A Man of No Importance) and McElwee (A Man for All Seasons) are a dynamic duo as Gar, the former spirited and lively, flitting about the stage with boundless energy, just the right foil for the latter, who wants to break out in front of other people but just can’t. They bounce around between the kitchen table and the bedroom in the back, where Public Gar puts on scratchy Mendelssohn records. The comfy but cold set is by Charlie Corcoran, with effective costumes by Orla Long, soft lighting by Michael Gottlieb, and keen sound and original interstitial music by Ryan Rumery and M. Florian Staab.

Donnelly (Juno and the Paycock) gives a tender, poignant performance as Madge, a motherly matron who has sacrificed her personal life to take care of S.B. and Gar. The rest of the ensemble is in fine form, with Fitzgerald (Katie Roche), who played Public Gar opposite O’Reilly in 1990, quirky as professor and poet Master Boyle and Con; Madigan (Coal Country) is a whirlwind as Lizzy, who is desperate to have Gar join them in Philadelphia; O’Malley (The Plough and the Stars) is sweetly innocent as Katie, who is waiting for Gar to finally step up; and Byrne (A Touch of the Poet) excels as the proper Senator Doogan and the perhaps less-than-proper Canon O’Byrne.

Philadelphia, Here I Come! is a timeless, quintessentially Irish drama from one of the best playwrights the country has produced. At one point, Lizzy, speaking about S.B., proclaims to Gar, “Sure! Sure! Typical Irish! He will think about it! And while he’s thinking about it the store falls in about his head. What age are you? Twenty-four? Twenty-five? What are you waiting for? For S.B. to run away to sea? Until the weather gets better?”

Philadelphia! is a fitting third selection for this special Irish Rep season, which began with Translations, in which the Irish watched the British literally take their language away; continued in Aristocrats, as the title characters gradually receded into fantasy, their words less and less consonant with the reality around them; and proceeds with Philadelphia!, as Gar, choking on silence, prepares to leave the only home he’s ever known for a new life in America. The Friel Project concludes May 15 – June 30 with the three-character Molly Sweeney, in which a woman seeks to restore her eyesight.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

TWO BY SYNGE: IN THE SHADOW OF THE GLEN / THE TINKER’S WEDDING

The Irish Rep’s Two by Synge features several musical interludes (photo by Carol Rosegg)

TWO BY SYNGE: IN THE SHADOW OF THE GLEN / THE TINKER’S WEDDING
Irish Repertory Theatre, W. Scott McLucas Studio Theatre
132 West 22nd St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Wednesday – Sunday through May 22, $50
212-727-2737
irishrep.org

I am here to sing — pun intended — the praises of the great John Keating, currently starring in the theatrical twinbill Two by Synge: In the Shadow of the Glen & The Tinker’s Wedding at the Irish Rep. It’s a rave long in coming. If you don’t know the name, you must not have visited the Irish Rep much in the last quarter century, during which time the Tipperary native has appeared in more than a dozen productions (as well as numerous Shakespeare adaptations at TFANA).

Keating, a wiry fellow who stands six-foot-three with wildly curly hair and an immediately recognizable face, portrayed the fearful, deeply religious Shawn Keogh in John Millington Synge’s Playboy of the Western World at the Irish Rep in 2002; he is not the same John Keating who illustrated a 1927 edition of the work.

Directed by Irish Rep founding artistic director Charlotte Moore, Two by Synge consists of a pair of early short works about Irish peasantry, which the Dublin-born Synge based on stories he heard and saw, then wrote about at the urging of his friend and colleague W. B. Yeats. They take place in the company’s downstairs W. Scott McLucas Studio Theatre, a tiny, intimate black box where you can practically reach out and touch the actors — while getting the sensational opportunity to revel in Keating’s extraordinary talent.

It begins with The Tinker’s Wedding, Synge’s bawdy tale of a poor couple, Sarah Casey (Jo Kinsella), the onetime Beauty of Ballinacree, and Michael Byrne (Keating), a tinker, who want to get married. Their relationship is more out of necessity than true love.

A couple of peasants want the local priest to marry them in The Tinker’s Wedding (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Sarah harasses Michael, arguing, “It’ll be small joy for yourself if you aren’t ready with my wedding ring. Is it near done this time, or what way is it at all?” He replies, “A poor way only, Sarah Casey, for it’s the divil’s job making a ring, and you’ll be having my hands destroyed in a short while the way I’ll not be able to make a tin can at all maybe at the dawn of day.” Sarah says, “If it’s the divil’s job, let you mind it, and leave your speeches that would choke a fool.” Michael retorts, “And it’s you’ll go talking of fools, Sarah Casey, when no man did ever hear a lying story even of your like unto this mortal day. You to be going beside me a great while, and rearing a lot of them, and then to be setting off with your talk of getting married, and your driving me to it, and I not asking it at all.”

Sarah tries to force the local priest (Sean Gormley) to perform the ceremony, but he is not about to do so without getting some form of payment, as Sarah and Michael are not church regulars and she does not live the life of a model Christian. “A holy pair, surely! Let you get out of my way,” the harried priest declares, attempting to leave them, but Sarah is adamant. Soon arriving is Michael’s mother, Mary (Terry Donnelly), a well-known drunk who has a way of ruining everything. She tells the priest, “Isn’t it a grand thing to see you sitting down, with no pride in you, and drinking a sup with the like of us, and we the poorest, wretched, starving creatures you’d see any place on the earth?” When the priest threatens again to not marry the couple, Sarah and Michael come up with a bizarre plan to ensure their union.

The Tinker’s Wedding — which Synge never got to see performed, as he died of Hodgkin’s lymphoma at the age of thirty-seven, more than seven months before its 1909 debut — is a bit too jumbled at first but eventually finds its legs. Daniel Geggatt’s set features stone walls, a fireplace, a small gate, and the facade of a house that resembles a huge Native American drum. Keating is a joy to watch, whether he is front and center or drifting off into the background, tinkering with the ring or a tin can. In full character, he follows the action with intricate gestures, from smiles and nods of agreement to frowns and head shakes. His eyes gape open in wonder and shudder in fear. While that might be what good acting is about, he takes it to another level, in the simplest moments as well as the turning points.

Keating (The Naturalists, The Winter’s Tale) is even better in the second play, the significantly superior In the Shadow of the Glen, the first of Synge’s works to be staged (in 1903). Keating plays a tramp in a shoddy coat (courtesy of costume designer David Toser) who has wandered in from a storm to seek temporary shelter in the home of Nora Burke (Kinsella) and her husband, Dan (Gormley), who is lying lifeless in the bed. (The set is essentially the same save for the “drum,” which has been rotated to reveal the bedroom.) She seems relatively nonplussed by the corpse, and the tramp is taken aback.

“It’s a queer look is on him for a man that’s dead,” the tramp points out. Nora responds, “He was always queer, stranger, and I suppose them that’s queer and they living men will be queer bodies after.” The tramp adds, “Isn’t it a great wonder you’re letting him lie there, and he is not tidied, or laid out itself?” She answers, “I was afeard, stranger, for he put a black curse on me this morning if I’d touch his body the time he’d die sudden, or let any one touch it except his sister only, and it’s ten miles away she lives in the big glen over the hill.” Tramp: “It’s a queer story he wouldn’t let his own wife touch him, and he dying quiet in his bed.” Nora: “I’m thinking many would be afeard, but I never knew what way I’d be afeard of beggar or bishop or any man of you at all. It’s other things than the like of you, stranger, would make a person afeard.”

The tropes of a classic ghost story turn on a fabulous plot twist and the arrival of the Burkes’ neighbor, young farmer Micheal Dara (Ciaran Bowling) — the character Keating played in his first professional performance in 1994 — in whom Nora sees a rescuer from her sudden predicament. “What way would I live and I an old woman if I didn’t marry a man with a bit of a farm, and cows on it, and sheep on the back hills?” she asks.

A tramp finds himself caught between a young farmer (Ciaran Bowling) and a woman (Jo Kinsella) mourning her husband in J. M. Synge’s In the Shadow of the Glen (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Keating (Autumn Royal, The O’Casey Cycle) is again magnificent in Glen, his body movements and shifting of his eyes utterly hypnotizing. He is an actor’s actor, making everyone around him better; watching him watching the other characters also offers another way into the play for the audience, no matter how successful it already is, and In the Shadow of the Glen is just that, a short but satisfying foray into the fear of death that hovers over Irish stories. Moore (The Streets of New York, The Playboy of the Western World) and lighting designer Michael O’Connor makes sure to never have Keating fade too far into the background as members of the rest of the fine cast take center stage.

The two shows, which total seventy-five minutes, also include six songs, two by Synge, three traditionals, and one original by Gormley, “A Smile upon My Face,” which comes between the two comedies. Yes, despite such lines as “It’s a cruel and a wicked thing to be bred poor,” said by Sarah Casey, Two by Synge is very funny.

In his preface to The Tinker’s Wedding, the playwright explained, “The drama is made serious — in the French sense of the word — not by the degree in which it is taken up with problems that are serious in themselves, but by the degree in which it gives the nourishment, not very easy to define, on which our imaginations live. We should not go to the theatre as we go to a chemist’s, or a dram-shop, but as we go to a dinner, where the food we need is taken with pleasure and excitement. . . . Of the things which nourish the imagination humour is one of the most needful, and it is dangerous to limit or destroy it. Baudelaire calls laughter the greatest sign of the Satanic element in man; and where a country loses its humor, as some towns in Ireland are doing, there will be morbidity of mind, as Baudelaire’s mind was morbid. In the greater part of Ireland, however, the whole people, from the tinkers to the clergy, have still a life, and view of life, that are rich and genial and humorous. I do not think that these country people, who have so much humor themselves, will mind being laughed at without malice, as the people in every country have been laughed at in their own comedies.”

Whenever you’re not sure if something is funny or not, just follow Keating’s lead and he’ll make sure you’re on the right path.

BLOOMSDAY REVEL 2021

Who: Terry Donnelly, Fiona Walsh, Una Clancy, Ed Malone, Aidan Redmond, Fiona Walsh, Gina Costigan, Sarah Street, Alan Gogarty
What: In-person and livestreamed Bloomsday celebration
Where: Blooms Tavern, 208 East 58th St., and online
When: Sunday, June 13, $45, 3:00
Why: For nearly one hundred years, people have been celebrating Bloomsday, when James Joyce’s Ulysses takes place, June 16, 1904. Yes, the seven-hundred-plus-page novel about Leopold Bloom and Odysseus, Molly Bloom and Penelope, and Stephen Dedalus and Telemachus is set during one day in Dublin. On Sunday, June 13, at 3:00, Origin Theatre Company is presenting its eighth annual “Bloomsday Revel,” happening both live at Blooms Tavern on East Fifty-Eighth St. as well as online. The socially distanced afternoon features dramatic readings by such New York-based Irish actors as Terry Donnelly, Fiona Walsh, Una Clancy, Ed Malone, Aidan Redmond, Fiona Walsh, Gina Costigan, and Sarah Street, musical interludes from Alan Gogarty, and a juried costume contest. Tickets for the in-person show, cocurated by Paula Nance and Michael Mellamphy, are $45 and include Bloomsday-inspired hors d’oeuvres and an open bar. “Luckily we didn’t miss a year in 2020,” new Origin artistic director Mellamphy said in a statement. “We were fully virtual last year, in a program packed with great performances and heartfelt messages. But this year we are creating an all-new hybrid that celebrates the many ways we share experiences like this unique and important literary holiday. James Joyce after all was all about setting new rules in art. . . . We’re immensely pleased to continue that tradition in 2021.”

THE IRISH (REP) . . . AND HOW WE GOT THAT WAY: A CELEBRATION OF ENDURANCE AND PERSEVERANCE THROUGH HARD TIMES

irish rep

Who: Terry Donnelly, Bob Green, Marian Tomas Griffin, Rusty Magee, Ciarán O’Reilly, Ciarán Sheehan, Donna Kane, Charlotte Moore, Kathleen Begala, Ellen McCourt, Malachy McCourt
What: Livestreamed broadcast of 1998 Irish Rep world premiere with new video introduction
Where: Irish Rep YouTube channel, preshow VIP reception on Zoom ($500 or more)
When: Monday, July 13, free, 7:00 (donations of $500 or more include special benefits and admission to preshow VIP party at 6:00)
Why: The Irish Rep continues its busy virtual programming with an online livestreamed screening of a 1998 production of Pulitzer Prize winner Frank McCourt’s The Irish . . . and How They Got That Way, which debuted in 1997 and was revived in 2000 and again in 2010. The irreverent musical about all things Irish features classic songs (“Danny Boy,” “Galway Bay,” “The Rose of Tralee,” and even a U2 tune) arranged by Rusty Magee, with a splendid cast consisting of Magee, Terry Donnelly, Bob Green, Marian Tomas Griffin, Ciarán O’Reilly, and Ciarán Sheehan; the show is directed by Irish Rep cofounder Charlotte Moore, with choreography by Barry McNabb, sets and projections by Shawn Lewis, costumes by David Toser, and lighting by Michael Gottlieb. The event, which is the company’s rescheduled gala fundraiser, will be preceded by a new video celebrating the history of the troupe and the original production with Moore, fellow cofounder O’Reilly, board chair Kathleen Begala, McCourt’s widow and board chair emerita Ellen McCourt, and playwright Malachy McCourt, Frank’s brother. It’s free to watch the show, although donations are accepted; if you give $500 or more, you can take part in the VIP preshow party, with a Zoom reception with the cast and creatives and a live performance by Sheehan.

During the pandemic, the Irish Rep has also presented Yes! Reflections of Molly Bloom, boasting a dazzling performance by Aedín Moloney; the Meet the Makers and The Show Must Go Online series; and The Gifts You Gave to the Dark, Darren Murphy’s short, heartbreaking work about a man (Marty Rea) in Belfast with Covid-19 unable to visit his dying mother (Marie Mullen) in Dublin, who is being cared for by her brother (Seán McGinley). Coming up is Dan Butler, Sean Gormley, John Keating, Tim Ruddy, and Amanda Quaid in an online version of Conor McPherson’s The Weir from July 21 to 25 and a virtual version of Barry Day’s Love, Noël, a musical about Noël Coward starring Steve Ross and KT Sullivan, from August 11 to 15.

THE O’CASEY CYCLE: THE PLOUGH AND THE STARS

Irishman battles Irishman in Sean O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Irish Repertory Theatre, Francis J. Greenburger Mainstage
132 West 22nd St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Through June 22, $50-$70
212-727-2737
irishrep.org

The Irish Rep concludes its outstanding “O’Casey Cycle” with the third play in Sean O’Casey’s Dublin Trilogy, The Plough and the Stars. The controversial 1926 work, the follow-up to 1923’s The Shadow of a Gunman and 1924’s Juno and the Paycock, the semiautobiographical The Plough and the Stars is the earliest of the stories, taking place in 1915-16 around the Easter Rising, when the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army battled the British army and Dublin Fusiliers, Catholics against Protestants in a violent rebellion. Charlie Corcoran’s immersive set, which extends up the sides of the theater and down the hall, changes from a tenement apartment to a pub and the street outside as a close-knit collection of intriguing characters prepare for a fight.

The play begins in November 1915 in the living room of Jack Clitheroe (Adam Petherbridge), a bricklayer, and his wife, Nora (Clare O’Malley), an elegant woman who wants more out of life; he’s a bit disappointed as well, dismayed that he had been passed over for a promotion to captain in the ICA. Carpenter Fluther Good (Michael Mellamphy) is attempting to get rid of the squeak in the front door as nosy charwoman Mrs. Grogan (Úna Clancy) accepts a package for Nora and opens it to find a fancy hat. “Such notions of upper-osity she’s getting’,” she declares. “Oh, swank, what!” Nora comes home to find her uncle, the daffy Peter Flynn (Robert Langdon Lloyd), and Fluther having words with the Young Covey (James Russell), a wisecracking atheist and socialist who enjoys riling people with his progressive beliefs.

Nora (Clare O’Malley) begs her husband, Jack (Adam Petherbridge), not to join the fight in conclusion of Sean O’Casey’s Dublin Trilogy (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Fruit vendor and Protestant loyalist Bessie Burgess (Maryann Plunkett) stops by to heap disdain on Nora, calling her a “little over-dressed trollope.” After everyone else leaves, Capt. Brennan (John Keating) arrives to tell Jack that he is the new commander of the eighth battalion of the ICA and must lead a reconnaissance attack, which upsets Nora, who wants him to stay home with her. Jack storms out with Capt. Brennan, and a distraught Nora is then visited by Mollser (Meg Hennessy), Mrs. Gogan’s sickly fifteen-year-old daughter who dreams of having the life Nora does. “I often envy you, Mrs. Clitheroe, seein’ th’ health you have, an’ th’ lovely place you have here, an’ wondherin’ if I’ll ever be sthrong enough to be keepin’ a home together for a man,” Mollser says. As a regiment passes by on its way to the front, Bessie sticks her head in to condemn the soldiers. It’s a brilliant first act, firmly establishing the characters, mixing in humor with dread as darkness awaits. “Is there anybody goin’, Mrs. Clitheroe, with a titther o’ sense?” Mollser asks.

The next three acts build on that extensive framework, with the addition of prostitute Rosie Redmond (Sarah Street), a barman (Harry Smith), a woman from Rathmines (Terry Donnelly) who is terrified of what is going on outside, and Jack’s flag-waving compatriots Lt. Langon (Ed Malone) and Sgt. Tinley (Smith). Director Charlotte Moore, the cofounder of the Irish Rep with Ciarán O’Reilly, knows the play well; she previously helmed the company’s 1988 production, its first show ever, as well as its 1997 revival. In honor of the Irish Rep’s thirtieth anniversary season, O’Reilly again is the voice of the speaker, as he was in 1988, spouting rhetoric to the assembled masses based on the words of Irish activist Padraig Pearse. The cast, most of whom also appear in The Shadow of a Gunman and Juno and the Paycock, is exemplary, creating a wholly believable fictional world.

During the first week of the premiere of The Plough and the Stars at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 1926, there were protesters and demonstrators angry with O’Casey’s treatment of Irish nationalism and religion, leading to a riot in which actor Barry Fitzgerald punched out a man who had climbed onstage, knocking him into the orchestra pit. “You have disgraced yourselves again,” senator and Abbey director W. B. Yeats said to the crowd. “Is this going to be an ever-recurring celebration of the arrival of Irish genius?” The 2019 iteration of the play might not pack the same kind of wallop, but it is a potent portrayal of civil strife and the power religious and political disagreement has to tear apart friends and neighbors, something we know all too well given the current climate in America.

THE O’CASEY CYCLE: THE SHADOW OF A GUNMAN

Minnie Powell (Meg Hennessy) and Donal Davoren (James Russell) flirt in Irish Rep revival of Sean O’Casey’s The Shadow of a Gunman (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Irish Repertory Theatre, Francis J. Greenburger Mainstage
132 West 22nd St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Through May 25, $50-$70
212-727-2737
irishrep.org

The Irish Rep’s thirtieth anniversary season, “The O’Casey Cycle,” features Sean O’Casey’s exceptional Dublin Trilogy. Last week I highly recommended Juno and the Paycock the 1924 play set during the Irish Civil War of 1922-23; 1925’s The Plough and the Stars, which takes place around the 1916 Easter Rising, was the first show Irish Rep ever put on, back in 1988, and will begin performances April 20. O’Casey’s first produced play was The Shadow of a Gunman, which premiered at the Abbey Theatre in 1923 and established the laborer as a new force on the scene. The play is set in May 1920, during the Irish War of Independence, in a tenement in Hilljoy Square in Dublin. Small-time peddler Seumas Shields (Michael Mellamphy) is sleeping late, something he appears to do often; while he waits for his colleague Mr. Maguire (Rory Duffy) to go out to sell their wares, a slew of other classic characters from Irish lore, from drunks and ne’er-do-wells to layabouts and overburdened women, come barging in.

Poet Donal Davoren (James Russell) is staying with him, which doesn’t make the landlord, Mr. Mulligan (Harry Smith), very happy, since the rent is overdue. The lovely young Minnie Powell (Meg Hennessy) develops a crush on Donal, believing him to be a heroic IRA gunman preparing for his next hit. “Maybe I am, and maybe I’m not,” he teases, taking advantage of the romantic attention. The blustery Tommy Owens (Ed Malone) stops by to let everyone know that he supports the IRA and will fight if called on. Mrs. Henderson (Una Clancy), who lives in a neighboring tenement, comes over with James Gallagher (Robert Langdon Lloyd), who reads a persnickety letter he wrote asking the IRA for help. And Mrs. Grigson (Terry Donnelly) is worried about her alcoholic husband, Adolphus (John Keating), who talks about himself in the third person. Maguire eventually shows up but is in a hurry, leaving a mysterious black bag with Seumas. Through all the mayhem and madness, the fear that the Black and Tans could show up at any minute hangs over the proceedings with so much dread.

James Gallagher (Robert Langdon Lloyd) seeks help from the IRA in The Shadow of a Gunman (photo by Carol Rosegg)

In the 105-minute two-act play, O’Casey avoids glorifying the lower class. “Upon my soul! I’m beginnin’ to believe that the Irish people are still in the stone age,” Seumas says, adding later, “Oh, this is a hopeless country!” Donal complains, “The people! Damn the people! They live in the abyss, the poet lives on the mountaintop . . . The poet ever strives to save the people; the people ever strive to destroy the poet. The people view life through creeds, through customs, and through necessities; the poet views creeds, customs, and necessities through life.” However, The Shadow of a Gunman is a slighter play than Juno and the Paycock, a less-layered tale lacking the same nuance and muscle. Charlie Corcoran’s fabulous tenement set, which runs throughout the theater, is only slightly altered from Paycock’s. Directed by Ciarán O’Reilly, who plays Capt. Boyle in Paycock, Gunman features many of the same actors, with Hennessy standing out as the coquettish Minnie and Donnelly reprising her role from the company’s 1999 production. In many ways, O’Casey’s vision of the country is personified by Seumas, who doesn’t want to get out of bed in the morning and does not want to go to work. “A land mine exploding under the bed is the only thing that would lift you out of it,” Donal says. It’s a funny line, but one more than tinged with seriousness.

THE O’CASEY CYCLE: JUNO AND THE PAYCOCK

Capt. Boyle (Ciarán O’Reilly) and his wife, Juno (Maryann Plunkett), see brighter days ahead in Juno and the Paycock (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Irish Repertory Theatre, Francis J. Greenburger Mainstage
132 West 22nd St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Through May 25, $50-$70
212-727-2737
irishrep.org

The Irish Rep’s inaugural 1988–89 season included The Plough and the Stars, part of Sean O’Casey’s 1923–26 Dublin Trilogy; the company brought it back again in 1997. To celebrate its thirtieth anniversary season, the Irish Rep is presenting revivals of the first two plays in the trilogy, the 1924 Juno and the Paycock and the 1923 The Shadow of the Gunman, in repertory through May 25, along with screenings of the 1937 John Ford film version of The Plough and the Stars with Barbara Stanwyck, Preston Foster, and Barry Fitzgerald and a reading series. For the occasion, which the Irish Rep is calling “The O’Casey Cycle,” the Francis J. Greenburger Mainstage theater has been transformed into a ramshackle 1920s tenement; Charlie Corcoran’s set extends well beyond the stage: Windows and brick walls run up the sides and down the hall, clothes are hanging to dry by the balcony, and there’s even a small bed hidden beneath the stairs by the restrooms. It’s now back in a “darling” adaptation after previous stagings at the Irish Rep by artistic director Charlotte Moore in 1995 and 2013–14.

Capt. Boyle (Ciarán O’Reilly) waxes philosophic with Joxer Daly (John Keating) in Sean O’Casey revival at the Irish Rep (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Juno and the Paycock takes place in 1922, during the Irish Civil War between the Diehard Republicans and the Free Staters, as matriarch Juno Boyle (Tony winner Maryann Plunkett) is trying to make ends meet in her family’s small apartment. Her husband, Capt. Boyle (Ciarán O’Reilly), spends most of his time, and what little money they have, hitting the pub with his best friend, the gangly ne’er-do-well Joxer Daly (John Keating), and complaining about terrible pains in his legs whenever the possibility of a job arises; their daughter, Mary (Sarah Street), is on strike with her trade union; and their son, Johnny (Ed Malone), is a bitter young man who lost an arm in the revolution and is worried that the IRA will show up at any moment to right a wrong. The Boyles hit the jackpot when schoolteacher Charles Bentham (James Russell) arrives to tell them that Capt. Boyle has inherited a significant sum of money from a dead relative. Mary, who has been courted by nudnik Jerry Devine (Harry Smith), begins dating the elegant Bentham, and the captain and Juno immediately start celebrating their good fortune by refurnishing their home and considering moving to a better location. But being a classic Irish melodrama about the futility of the working and lower classes, prosperity is not necessarily waiting for them around the corner.

Johnny (Ed Malone) is nervous as his sister, Mary (Sarah Street), and mother, Juno (Maryann Plunkett), try to calm him down in Juno and the Paycock (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Seamlessly directed by Neil Pepe, the longtime artistic director of the Atlantic Theater, Juno and the Paycock is a joy to behold. It’s somewhat reminiscent of The Honeymooners, only Irish, with Capt. Boyle / Ralph Kramden always scheming to fill his empty coffers, the none-too-bright Joxer / Ed Norton unwittingly by his side, offering comic relief, and Juno / Alice doing her best to keep it all together. “There’ll never be any good got out o’ him so long as he goes with that shouldher-shruggin’ Joxer,” Juno says about her husband. “I killin’ meself workin’, an’ he sthruttin’ about from mornin’ till night like a paycock!” As downtrodden as the times are, O’Casey injects plenty of humor into the story, which was also made into a film by Alfred Hitchcock in 1930. The cast, which is very similar to the 2013–14 edition (the main changes are Plunkett as Juno and Street as Mary; Terry Donnelly has played neighbor Maisie Madigan in all three Irish Rep versions), is outstanding, fully embodying a troubled family and its tight-knit, suspicious community, making the most of O’Casey’s well-drawn characters.

The socioeconomic conditions of 1920s Dublin might not provide a lot of opportunities for the Boyles, but they also have to take a long, hard look at themselves for the desperate situation they’re in, at least some of which they bear responsibility for, as O’Casey explores the concept of living by one’s principles. It’s also about looking forward. “Maybe, Needle Nugent, it’s nearly time we had a little less respect for the dead, an’ a little more regard for the livin’,” Mrs. Madigan says to the tailor (Robert Langdon Lloyd). Joxer, wonderfully played by the tall, gangly, wild-haired Keating, the longtime Irish Rep treasure, has a habit of describing things as “darling,” and that’s just what this production is, a darling adaptation of a powerful, poignant play.