The Irish Players’ “Shining City” is described as “an Irish
ghost story for today,” but it’s not a shivers-around-the-campfire kind of
ghost story, nor is it full of banshees or other Celtic heebie-jeebies. There is a ghost in it, or something
described as a ghost, but Conor McPherson’s play is
something more subtle and more intriguing: a study of guilt-ridden,
inarticulate people who are indeed haunted.
The action takes place in the Dublin office of Ian (Ken Dauer), a newly licensed therapist. In the first of the
play’s five scenes he is listening to a patient, John (Bill Alden), whose wife Mary
was recently killed in a car accident. Still consumed with grief and guilt over
her death and their unhappy marriage, John has recently seen Mary’s ghost in
their house, half hiding behind a door and seeming to cry out. John returns in
a later scene with an even more involved monologue about his attempts (while
still married) at having an affair with a woman he met at a party, a visit to a
brothel that ended in a violent beating, and coming home to his wife and
attacking her. In the final scene John is moving on and says goodbye to Ian.
His confession seems to have exorcised Mary’s ghost; the very end of the play,
shocking but logical, suggests otherwise, but also offers a small light of
hope. (Perhaps literally: John’s parting gift to Ian is a lamp.)
Ian, of course, has a complicated story of his own, starting
with leaving the priesthood (this is an Irish play, after all). One of the
play’s other two scenes is an encounter with his fiancée and the mother of his
daughter, Neasa (ShawndaUrie), a barmaid who lives with Ian’s brother and
sister-in-law and wants to move away from Dublin. The other is with a young man
named Lawrence (Patrick Best); I’ll borrow a phrase from the New York Times
review of “Shining City” and describe him simply as “a scruffy young father who
is hard up for cash.” He also offers Ian a rare chance at communication.
I am being deliberately vague about
“Shining City” because I don’t want to give too much away. The characters’
stories and their attempts at communicating with each other — and dealing with
their ghosts — are the play. McPherson is a prolific
and highly regarded Irish playwright, and a very skilled one: “Shining City” is
beautifully written. While the characters may have trouble expressing
themselves, the author does not. Each scene and each speech seems to join with
the others to articulate the play’s theme: that communicating with another
person is next to impossible, but loneliness is hell.
The “shining city” of Dublin is a character in this play,
too, though it exists only outside Ian’s office and in the comments of the
characters. McPherson makes it seem no different from any other big modern
city: busy, soulless, money-driven, easy to get lost in, and probably necessary
to get out of.
A moody piece like this needs a first-rate presentation, and
it gets one from the Irish Players (who have been doing this kind of thing very
well for quite a while). They are expertly guided by Jean Gordon Ryon, in a production with minimal movement, maximum
impact, and a very consistent mood. (Even the brief scene changes have a
half-lit air of mystery.)
The most demanding role is probably that of John, with his
two huge virtual monologues. Bill Alden performs these with expert pacing and
delivery, but also gives a very lucid portrayal of John’s arc as a character, from
his nervous meeting with Ian, through self-revelation and despair, to self-acceptance.
As Ian the therapist, Ken Dauer is professionally
noncommittal and slightly wary, but in his scenes with Neasa
and Lawrence, he shows his character’s paralyzing pain and guilt. And while Neasa and Lawrence only get a scene each, Shawnda Urie and Patrick Best
deliver well-rounded, very human characterizations of two rather ill-used
people. As for these actors’ Irish accents — well, I am no expert, but they
were subtly different from each other and easy to understand.
“Shining City” is the kind of play that stays in your head
long after you see it; I haven’t quite put it all together myself. But the
Irish Players give a very satisfying production of what I can only call a very
haunting play.
This article appears in Mar 12-18, 2014.
