Critic’s Pick
Rain encourages life; it can also drown it out. Sometimes parents have a similar effect on their children. Love might be the fuel to navigate these channels. Such is the case in two very different plays currently onstage. John Patrick Shanley’s Outside Mullingar at Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati is a kind of cockeyed Irish love story, focusing on two generations, parents at odds with offspring and that younger generation struggling to find their own balance in the world.
Shanley’s script is wonderfully lyrical in an understated way. Former Cincinnati Playhouse Artistic Director Ed Stern assembled a sterling cast for this ETC guest-directing gig. Playing Tony, a hidebound farmer who is certain he’s about to meet his maker, is Joneal Joplin, familiar to Playhouse audiences in many roles.
Cincinnati Shakespeare’s Artistic Director Brian Phillips plays Anthony, Tony’s bashful but dutiful son who’s deferred his own life to tend the family farm. Local stage veteran Dale Hodges is Aoife, who lives on the farm next door; her husband has just died, and Anthony invites her to drop by, which she does with her strong-willed, fiercely independent daughter Rosemary, played by Jennifer Joplin (who happens to be Joneal’s daughter).
They comprise a feisty group. The elders banter about life’s transience. Anthony can’t fathom their gloomy attitudes, and he’s surprised to learn that Rosemary has borne a grudge against him since childhood. Mordant wit runs through all these conversations, dry Irish humor and pragmatic attitudes. Overhead are storm cloud skies — guest designer Joe Tilford’s detailed but flexible set is topped by projections of storm clouds; when Anthony finds Rosemary smoking near the barn, a real onstage downpour is their backdrop.
Tony wants the family name perpetuated, while childless Anthony seeks his own path. Rosemary yearns for some attention, but she’s weary of waiting for the right man. Nevertheless, she goes to bat for Anthony when Tony suggests he’s considering selling the farm to an American nephew rather than pass it on to his son. Genuine, heartwarming emotions flow from Shanley’s tale and this powerful, well-acted production, inducing laughter and hope.
• Richard Greenberg’s Three Days of Rain is a mystery that unfolds in reverse. In Act I it’s 1995 as three adult children of two iconic New York City architects ponder the current state of their lives and what motivated their parents three decades earlier. Their conclusions, based on memory and a recently found laconic journal, make sense, but when Act II pushes back to 1960, almost everything they have hypothesized proves to be wrong. As is often the case, life was much more complicated. Peeling the onion is a fascinating, revealing process. It really rains in this play, too, as best as such a weather can be created in the close confines of the tiny Clifton Performance Theatre: At first it’s simply a detail of several intense days of life-changing action, but it becomes purifying and revelatory.
Greenberg’s fascinating narrative construct for this show requires three actors to play two intimately connected generations. Adam Jones is gay son Ned in 1995, then Walker in 1960, his stuttering but renowned architect father. MaryKate Moran is first Ned’s tightly wound sister, then their erratic mother, full of Southern charm and prickly attitudes in the past. Carter Bratton plays handsome Pip, their childhood friend who has become a soap opera star; in Act II he’s Theo, his father, a genius who’s admired but can’t create anything other than a shadow over Walker, his creative partner.
The storefront theater’s cramped stage limits this production, directed by Leah Strasser. But strong acting carries the day, especially Jones in diametrically opposed roles — flamboyant, neurotic Ned and withdrawn, uncommunicative Walker. In the show’s final moments, puzzle pieces snap into place and all six characters make more sense. It’s evident why the younger generation turned out as they did, even if they can’t fully parse the motivations and truth of past events.
There’s a kind of love — between siblings, friends and lovers — that hovers over both Outside Mullingar and Three Days of Rain. They are set in very different worlds, but both engender rain and its inevitable outcomes. Sunshine proves possible, especially in Ireland. In New York, the outlook is cloudier and it’s knowledge that helps the world make sense.
OUTSIDE MULLINGAR, presented by Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati, continues through May 30. THREE DAYS OF RAIN, presented by Untethered Theater at the Clifton Performance Theatre continues through May 23.
This article appears in May 13-19, 2015.
