Photo Credit: Ross Zentner
Lively Irish music, a finely detailed kitchen/living room set and a backdrop that features the changing colors of the Irish countryside provide a perfect setting for Outside Mullingar by playwright John Patrick Shanley. This engaging play by Next Act Theatre opened last weekend to a well-earned standing ovation.
Some of the area’s best actors give life to characters that are undeniably quirky but also are deeply rooted in the rural, Irish soil. With their attempts at subtlety ranging from little to none, they all plainly speak their minds. There’s widower Tony (James Pickering), a lifelong farmer; his next-door neighbor Aoife (Carrie Hitchcock); and their middle-aged children Anthony and Rosemary, play by real-life marrieds David Cecsarini and Deborah Staples. She’s an associate artist at Milwaukee Repertory Theater and he is Next Act’s artistic director.
The bucolic farm scene is set for dark humor, as the play begins on the same day as a funeral for longtime resident Christopher, who was also Aoife’s husband. Tony comes home from the funeral in an irritated mood, as he was planning to spend the rest of the day in solitude. But Anthony spoiled his plans by extending an invitation to the grieving relatives to stop by after the service.
Tony, still unhappy when the pair arrives, announces to the weepy Aoife that she’ll “probably be dead herself within a year.” This kind of blunt remark provides much of the play’s humor. These plain-spoken farmers banter back and forth, mostly about issues affecting the adjoining farms and who will take care of them. Tony reflects that he’s “drawn strength” from the land over the years, a trait he believes that Anthony lacks. Anthony, who takes little joy in the tasks of farm life, seems to have given up on the prospect of a happy life.
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For better or worse, all these characters (even the unseen and recently deceased Christopher) can hold a grudge for years. This comes into play in the longest-courtship-on-record between a reluctant Anthony and the more eager Rosemary. Apparently, she has never forgiven (nor forgotten) him for a typical boyish prank when he was six years old.
Director Edward Morgan has crafted a masterful tale of Irish storytelling in Shanley’s material. He delineates each character with an individual sense of pride, spirituality and stubbornness that has molded them through good years and bad. Shanley, the playwright, draws from his own Irish background in the “old country” to make these characters compellingly real, which adds richness and authenticity to their story. For an exceptional example of Irish-inspired storytelling, there’s no place better to go than Next Act Theatre.
Through Oct. 21 at the Next Act Theatre, 255 S. Water St. For tickets, visit www.nextact.org or call 414-278-0765.
