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Sean Power - Reviews & InterviewsShadow of a Gunman April 22, 1999, Thursday THE ARTS/CULTURAL DESK THEATER REVIEW: A Master's First Success, on the Futility of ViolenceBy WILBORN HAMPTON There is a bit of farce in any tragedy. Few playwrights understood that more clearly than Sean O'Casey, and few tragedies have at times seemed more farcical than this century's episode of the Irish-English conflict. As Seamus Shields observes in O'Casey's "Shadow of a Gunman": "It's the Irish people all over. They take a serious thing as a joke and a joke as a serious thing." "Shadow of a Gunman," which is being given a first-rate revival by the Irish Repertory Theater, was O'Casey's first success as a playwright and formed the foundation of his so-called Dublin trilogy, the others being "Juno and the Paycock" and "The Plough and the Stars." If it has often been regarded as a lesser work than the other two, "Shadow of a Gunman" is a funny and wise play that meditates on the futility of violence and may even strike a more sympathetic chord in today's audiences. The time is 1922, just before the creation of the Irish Free State. Every tenement in Dublin harbors both Irish Republican Army gunmen and informers, and the greatest fear of both is a midnight visit by the Black and Tans. It is a time when men go out for a walk after tea and never come home, and wives worry about whether the life insurance policy pays if their husbands are shot after curfew. Donal Davoren (Declan Mooney) is a young would-be poet rooming in squalor with Seamus, who once himself "believed in the gun when there were no guns in the country." Donal is a mystery man to the neighbors, and everyone assumes he is a gunman on the run. He's not, but when the lovely Minnie Powell (Aedin Maloney), a flapper in the making, shows up and takes it for granted that he's a wanted rebel, he doesn't exactly deny it. After all, Minnie is attracted to poets and gunmen, and Donal's attracted to Minnie. O'Casey created some of the most memorable characters of the Irish theater, and several of them show up in "Shadow of a Gunman." There is Maguire (Sean Power, the self-effacing salesman who cooks up bombs, and Tommy Owens (John Keating), the boisterous blowhard who vows over and over that he would die for Ireland, but only until the Black and Tans show up. There is Mr. Gallagher (Michael Judd) and Mrs. Henderson (Rosemary Fine), whose fretting over the exact wording of a protest letter has become a classic comic scene of 20th-century theater, and the Grigsons (Terry Donnelly and Peter Rogan), whose drunken brawling is only a prelude to the fireworks to come. Finally there is Seamus (Ciaran O'Reilly), the playwright's stand-in, a onetime rebel who quotes Shakespeare and Shelley and disdains fanatics of all stripes who "wait until the curfew to go out" and put "petrol in the holy water." It is Seamus who sees the heartbreak ahead, who hears the tapping on the walls. "They say the gunmen are dying for the people," he says. "But it's the people who die for the gunmen." One criticism of "Shadow of a Gunman" has always been unevenness in its construction, but Charlotte Moore has directed a trimmed-down, polished production that moves smartly along, taking the jokes and the serious things in even stride. Ms. Moore has assembled a fine cast that is led by Mr. O'Reilly, a gifted actor whose brilliantly understated performance as Seamus encapsulates the Irish dilemma.
By Sean O'Casey;
directed by Charlotte Moore;
sets by Akira Yoshimura and N. Joseph De Tullio;
costumes by David Toser; lighting by Gregory Cohen;
production stage manager, Jason Sutton;
produced by Ciaran O'Reilly.
Presented by the Irish Repertory Theater, Ms. Moore,
artistic director; Mr. O'Reilly, producing director.
At 132 West 22d Street, Chelsea.
Published: 04 - 22 - 1999 , Late Edition - Final , Section E , Column 1 , Page 5 |