WHERE BLARNEY GOES TO DIE
Who’d have guessed that a 90-minute Irish play would be set in a bar where everyone gets sozzled and crocked much sooner that an hour and a half could ever allow? But in his 1985 exercise in forensic disillusionment, acclaimed Irish author Tom Murphy wants to subvert stereotypes as much as exploit them: Like so many of his country-authors, Murphy lambastes the small mindedness of assorted louts 
inhabiting Galway. (They’re as bogtrotter inflexible–as in ignorant–as any of the Aran islanders, also from the west of the isle, immortalized by John Millington Synge.)
With verve and nerve Jonathan Berry mounts a sometimes impenetrably Gaelic local debut for Strawdog Theatre Company–and the accents, local gossip, Irish in-jokes and allusions, and thick brogues prove a hindrance to any easy access to whatever’s at stake. It’s all talk, of course, since that’s how Irish characters create, define, distinguish and expose themselves. Ably aided by Berry’s high-energy direction, Murphy keeps the the interest mounting.
After a 10-year absence in America where he tried to make it in television, Michael (spirited Adam Soule) has returned to the once-comforting White House Pub where he soon realizes that time isn’t the only distance that separates him from his old 
chums. He hopes to reunite with the wandering J.J., the one free thinker and liberal-minded pal in this ingrown group. Inspired by the idealism of J.F.K., J.J. once was the Muse and instigator of a “rising culture” in this backwater bar. But these galoots have reduced Kennedy’s call to idealism into an inebriated and happily aborted plan to rush north and singlehandedly defeat the Brits in Ulster. But, as with so many Irish rebels before him, J.J. is in his own self-exile. Only his demure daughter Anne (Elee Schrock in a remarkable last-minute substitution) remains behind, hopefully to escape as well.
Michael’s born antagonist is the bloviating so-called “realist” Tom (fiery but ultimately crushed Michael Dailey), who calls J.J. a “slog” and attacks Michael for daring to think he could rise above his roots. Like Eugene O’Neill’s equally Irish 
polemicist Hickey in The Iceman Cometh, Tom lives to destroy “pipe dreams” and slaps down the discontented schoolteacher Liam (Ed Porter) and his sadsack girlfriend Peggy (Anita Deely) every chance he gets.
The contretemps between Michael and Tom (which is also between the future and past, state and religion, change and rut) ends, as it must, equivocally: The bar closes, the lights go off, and we’re left looking at teenage Anne staring through the darkness and into what future, we can only guess.
Richly enacted by a flawless seven-person cast, the fight over J.J.’s legacy produces a caustic mix of beer-soaked confessionals and maudlin maunderings steeped in quiet desperation. Whether an audience finds any release in their belligerent blarney depends on how much you care to argue over whether Jesus really committed suicide.
photos by Chris Ocken
Conversations on a Homecoming
Strawdog Theatre Company, 3829 N. Broadway Street
scheduled to end on September 28, 2013
for tickets, call 866-811-4111 or visit http://www.Strawdog.org
for info on this and other Chicago Theater, visit http://www.TheatreinChicago.com
