Images: New York poster, production photos of Conor McPherson's The Seafarer. Credits: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/12/07/theater/Sea1450.jpg, http://images.broadwayworld.com/columnpic/TheSeaFarerLogo.jpg,
It's been nearly a month since I saw this show at Boston's SpeakEasy Stage Company, housed in the multi-stage Boston Center for the Arts. It is the third McPherson play I've seen (following his The Weir (1999) and Shining City (2006)), and the third Irish play thus far in Boston this fall. McPherson is closer to Brian Friel than Martin McDonagh in his love of storytelling, even of the supernatural, but allies with McDonagh in this play populated as it is by the Irish underclass. Set on Xmas Eve in a rundown basement apartment in a dodgy part of Dublin, the all-male cast of characters feature brothers James "Sharky" Harkin and his older brother Richard, recently blinded after a dumpster-diving mishap. A dedicated boozer and welfare bum, Richard tries to get his brother to join in the holiday festivities with his other layabout friends Ivan Curry (a doltish sidekick who'd rather drink with Richard than face his wife and kids at home) and Nicky Giblin (a handsome fun-seeker who's taken up with Sharky's ex-girlfriend). Sharky has returned from working down south and is trying to change his ways, including swearing off the drink, when Nicky brings over a new friend for a night of drinking and cards; Mr. Lockhart.
We soon realize, after establishing the characters and their histories quite effectively (including the requisite McPherson touch of telling a ghost story), that Mr. Lockhart is the Devil and Sharky is his Daniel Webster. Lockhart tells him he will play poker with him for his soul, bargained away in desparation many years before after a bar-room beating gone wrong. Act Two continues on through the night with plenty of humor and dramatic tension as we wonder who will prevail in this ultimate game of chance and fate. Of course, being set on Xmas Eve and ending on Xmas morning is a bit of a giveaway that a happy ending for Sharky is in store, so it's not too much of a spoiler to say that Sharky and Richard head off to early Mass and Mr. Lockhart heads back to Hades without his catch.
The plot seems slight, but the craft that McPherson brings to his dialogue amongst these five characters is never less than taut, revealing and often laugh-out-loud funny. And Sharky, who has clearly had a rough past filled with many mistakes along the way, wins us over as a protagonist who wants to reform and then is faced with a fight for his life when Satan shows up to collect his soul. Much of the humor in the play lies in the fact that only Sharky and Mr. Lockhart know what's really going on, while the other three men get progressively drunker and rowdier over their cards. And we find ourselves caught up in the classic Faustian struggle for more life, always more life.
SpeakEasy's production is finely directed by Carmel O'Reilly, Artistic Director of a local Irish theatre company called Sugan Theatre. She has cast some of her favorite actors, it seems, as three out of the five actors in the company have appeared in Sugan shows. These three actors (Billy Meleady as Sharky, Derry Woodhouse as Mr. Lockhart and Ciaran Crawford as Nicky Giblin) fully inhabit their respective roles. Woodhouse in particular plays the Devil with such cool assurance that the temperature in the theatre appears to drop when he enters. A monologue he gives at one point to Sharky is masterful as he describes his loathing for the "insect-like" human body he must inhabit to stalk the earth in Xmas Eve, collecting debtors' souls. Meleady gives us a fine Sharky, striking a clear balance between the troubled and hot-tempered man he has been and the better man he wants to be. Larry Coen does a nice job with the slightly slow but essentially nice Ivan and Bob Colonna plays Richard with the blustery bravado of a man who has lost his way in the world, but is determined to survive, if only to drink himself to death. Colonna was still struggling with some lines when I saw an early performance in this run, and I imagine McPherson's quick and sharp text must offer a major memorization challenge to actors. The rewards, however, are great; McPherson continues to write plays that impress me with their inherent love of story and storytelling that is so much part of the Irish culture he wants to transmit on stage.
