.jpg)
A MODEL OF UNDERSTATEMENT: Petersen and Warren. |
The stock stage Irish drunk is of limited entertainment value, a silver-tongued Boyo full of charming blarney that’s quickly wearying. Fortunately, Conor McPherson knows that the real McCoy is a sadder lad, but not half so glib. So the playwright’s challenge with Dublin Carol is to let life-size characters articulate the troubles and insights that Guinness-inflated Brendan Behan wannabes can’t even dream of.Trinity Repertory Company’s rendition (through January 7) is a moving experience precisely because it similarly plays down all that could be pumped up: the pathos, the colorful anecdotes, the folk wisdom. As was demonstrated in the haunting Gamm production of The Weir in 2002, McPherson’s forte is to give voice to the ordinary people he grew up around. Listening to one of his characters is like eavesdropping in a pub, albeit on people who have brought along their own writers to trim and polish their on-the-money yet natural-sounding dialogue.
One effective method of this playwright is to not overstay his welcome. Dublin Carol lasts less than 90 minutes and has only three characters, one of whom is in only one of the three scenes, which take place in the same room. The story revolves around John Plunkett (William Petersen), a man well over the hill and only minimally relieved at not being under it. Death is a daily reminder to him, since he works at a funeral home as one of those black-suited men who carry the casket to the hearse and grave.
John is an alcoholic, but the difference between the drunk he is and the drunk he was is the difference between a chunk of memento shrapnel and a sucking chest wound. Throughout the day during which the play takes place, John polishes off a fifth of whiskey, with some help, but it’s to maintain a buzz, to provide white noise to drown out all his guilty thoughts.
He remains as clear-headed as his company, the first of whom is Mark, played with an interesting gradation of self-centered sympathy by Danny Mefford. The 20-year-old is also working as an usher, but only as a part-time job for a while. On the surface he seems content, with a love life and a future. But by the last scene, when he shambles in drunk after unsuccessfully and clumsily trying to break up with his girlfriend, we see that there’s a potential maladaptive version of John within him always ready to break out. Without turning this into a sociology essay, McPherson sketches a miniature world of Irishmen who when distressed would rather clutch a bottle than a woman. In a similar commentary rather than coincidence, the three women we meet in this play, and a fourth described, are shown to be the most miserable when they’re the most passive, in contrast to their hyperactive male counterparts.
The third character we meet is Mary (Rachael Warren), the sullen adult daughter that John hasn’t seen in 10 years. The occasion is the fact that his equally estranged wife is lying in a hospital bed, dying of cancer, and would like to see him, this being Christmas Eve. Warren is a model of actorly restraint here. She skillfully negotiates this minefield of sentimental potential, which makes Mary’s eventual reaching out all the more meaningful, as does her combining stifled fierceness with mystified love.
