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A CurtainUp Los Angeles Review
The Seafarer
McPherson wrote about Christmas in Dublin Carol which I saw in Dublin and used Irish ghost stories in his award-winning The Weir. The Seafarer unabashedly stretches the myths to their limits but shrouds them in alcoholism and plays them out in a poker game. In melancholy lyricism, McPherson gives us the devil's take on heaven, hell, death. The Prince of Darkness is here called Mr. Lockhart. He's never addressed as anything else by the other men, as though they sensed he had a title and is one of the boys, though more elegant. He's played cards in "shebeens, police stations, amazing Georgian rooms". It was in a police station that he played with Sharky and got him released. He implies he also did the same for Ivan, one of the other men there, though Ivan doesn't remember — yet. Half the fun and fascination of a McPherson play comes from his characters. Sharky lives with his brother Richard, blind, despotic, a world-class manipulator but a brother for all that; heavy-drinker Ivan, blind without his glasses, who turns out to be the play's McGuffin; youthful extrovert Nicky, now living with Sharky's ex-wife. Randall Arney first directed The Seafarer at Steppenwolf in Chicago with some of the cast members seen here, including the brilliant John Mahoney. Arney catches the rhythm, humor and humanity of McPherson's writing and the eerie terror emanating from Mr. Lockhart. That gentleman is played here by Tom Irwin, who makes him a suave glossy devil who hates music, hates the human bodies that God loves and exits with such wounded reluctance to the freezing lonely hell he vividly described that you almost feel sorry for him. McPherson has written the most empathetic Lucifer since Milton and Irwin makes him a thousand years old, lonely, yearning and clinging to the shreds of power. Matt Roth is the lively young Nicky who now lives with Sharky's wife and you can see why. Paul V. O'Connor plays the feckless Ivan who'll be goin' through the Hole in the Wall with Mr. Lockhart someday and by the end of the play the audience will understand why he probably will and Sharkey probably won't. Andrew Connolly's understated Sharkey is the still heart of the play. He struggles to redeem his misspent life and Connolly's unpretentious performance projects the truth that spoke to God's ear. John Mahoney as Sharkey's blind brother Richard makes vitality out of nothing. He's petulant, tyrannical, revolting and so full of the life he loves that his humanity warms all the lives around him. Takeshi Kata has designed a blue-collar Dublin house and Daniel Ionazzi's lighting design includes shadows that precede the actors down the stairs, presaging events to come and figures that are not what they seem. The beauty of the play is its unconventionality. Mercy and punishment seem equally arbitrary in McPherson's take. Richard defines it, when giving Sharky his Christmas gift: "Yeah, well you don't deserve it now after your disgraceful behavior. But, sure, it's Christmas. All is forgiven."
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