by John Patrick Shanley
Directed by Ian Malcolm
Presented by Domino Theatre
representing Eastern Ontario Drama League (EODL)
It's something of a rarity in this day and age for a writer to set out on a conscious effort to pen a love story for the theatre. But Outside Mullingar is a play that combines much wisdom and experience with a quiet rural setting, somewhat lost characters and a dash of good old-fashioned romance -- and the resulting mixture yields some laughs, some deep thought, a few tears, and a beautiful and intriguing set of human relationships. I found the play both fascinating and involving the first time I saw it staged (two years ago) and it remains all of that and then some in this production.
I suspect that not a little of my affection for Outside Mullingar arises from my age, basically the same as the author, and from the choice of a rural Irish setting which in so many ways reminds me of the small communities which I've visited in Scotland's Outer Hebrides. These sixties in my life are an age when the "might-have-beens" begin to surface more and more in my thoughts, and I suspect in Shanley's thoughts as well. In expressing his own feelings, Shanley has said that reaching the age of 60 awoke him to "the fleeting opportunities of life, the farce of caution." The most endearing aspect of this play is the way that it takes the "might-have-beens" of a couple of neighbours, eggs them on into discarding the farce of caution, and turns their lives into "will becomes" right before our eyes.
This script is loaded with good laugh lines, and the audience on Friday night joined in with a will right from the first exchange of pointed remarks. But these are not stuck-on or gratuitous laughs; they rise, completely naturally, out of the contrasting personalities of the quartet of characters, and out of the relationships which bind them all to each other in a web of friendship and familial love. The author's care to keep the characters paramount also ensures that all of the laughter carries with it the rueful recognition of ourselves in the people we see brought to life upon the stage. Many moments of this play feel uncannily like looking in a mirror.
Despite some minor difficulties, Domino Theatre's cast and crew mounted a cohesive, smoothly-running show which seemed far shorter than its 100-minute running time. Unlike the last production I saw, this company ran the entire show without intermission.
That's a good place to start, because the play is definitely naturalistic, and as definitely requires three settings -- Anthony's kitchen, Rosemary's kitchen, and an outdoor shed with at least a deep eaves under which the characters can shelter from the rain. In an ideal world with near-unlimited time and money and an ideally-equipped space, this could best be done with a revolve.
Domino's solution was effective, with a technical caveat. When we arrived in the theatre, we saw the kitchen and sitting area of the Reilly home, with Tony's armchair situated forward of the kitchen table. This box set was placed over at stage right, with the stage left wall angled very sharply away from the room so that audience on the far side of the theatre could see the space. At the outer end of the angled wall was a separate, smaller set piece which created the shed and its roofed entrance. At the end of the first act, the shed was rolled across from stage left to stage right and the angled wall was pivoted around to the opposite angle so that we now saw the Muldoon kitchen on the stage left side of the space. All this took place in a matter of seconds, and allowed for the entire play to flow smoothly without the intermission break that would normally take place at this point.
But...
(you just knew that was coming, didn't you?)
…that rolling set piece didn't roll quite far enough, and about 20 seats at the front corner of the auditorium were left with only a partial view of the Muldoon kitchen. I was told that one audience member called the second half of the show "a nice radio play" because she couldn't see most of what happened in that kitchen. Well, we all know that live theatre without glitches just does not happen, especially when transferring a show into a totally unfamiliar space with only the one work day to make it all cohere.
Visually, the set showed us two old-fashioned and well-lived-in country cottages. I wondered if the director and designer had interpreted the "next door" of the script to mean "two halves of a semi-detached house," because the two rooms were nearly mirror images of each other and similar in the basic décor of walls and shape/size of windows. Set dressing and props were well-chosen for colour and for age -- the old-fashioned "portable" tube TV was a good example.
Lighting effects and settings were effective. The lighting plot created a warm but not-over-bright interior for the two kitchens, and a much more subtle look with a good practical light for the shed. The lightning special was believable too.
Music tracks employed throughout the show were well-chosen for their emotional content. Sound levels were excellent for the music, but at one point the very believable soundscape of outdoor animal/bird sounds was a bit too loud for the actors on the shed set.
The relationships among the four characters were strongly drawn by this cast. As the play opens, Aoife Muldoon has just buried her husband, Christopher. Although the opening conversations flow from this event, he is soon left behind as the two parents (Aoife Muldoon and Tony Reilly) cope with their own illnesses and impending ends while their children (Rosemary Muldoon and Anthony Reilly) face the possibility of middle age alone extending into their own old age.
But then there are the emotional undercurrents, which extend across the invisible boundaries between the two homes as well as between generations in each family. The company did an excellent job of letting us see and sense those undercurrents long before the dialogue clued us in to what was actually going on.
David Hurley played the bluff and blustery Tony with plenty of verbal vim and vigour to contrast with his elder's difficulty of movement. Hurley's splendidly clear voice and diction allowed all of his lines to register. He made us totally believe in this man who says whatever crosses his mind, not so much because he doesn't care what anyone thinks of his words, but because he has no clue that anyone else even has a thought in their heads. In his final moments, there was real poignancy in his announcement that he hadn't loved Mary (his wife) but had married her only "because she would have me." A moment later, the balancing description of the moment when he realized that he truly had come to love her was both heartfelt and beautiful in the poetry of his voice.
Geoff Johnson played the painfully shy Anthony in such a way that his voice sounded like a weaker, less certain echo of his father. This Anthony blustered too, but with far less assurance, conviction, or pomposity. In the second act, I could totally relate to his shyness and inability to see where Rosemary was trying to steer him. The moment when he announced why he had bought the flashy metal detector became terribly real, as his emotion drove him to burst through the wall of shyness and self-abasement and state for the first time (albeit indirectly) that he loved Rosemary.
Sandie Cond drew all eyes from her first entrance as Aoife Muldoon. Although her old-fashioned mourning garb was eye-catching, what really caught my attention was her intent, aware facial expression. Here was a woman who would always hear more than was said, and see more than what was shown. Her tart little remarks were nailed with impeccable timing, and her assurance and authority in every pronouncement were most believable. It was also plain that Aoife knew exactly what Rosemary was trying to achieve in Act 1, and quite likely figured it out without Rosemary ever actually telling her.
This script is loaded with good laugh lines, and the audience on Friday night joined in with a will right from the first exchange of pointed remarks. But these are not stuck-on or gratuitous laughs; they rise, completely naturally, out of the contrasting personalities of the quartet of characters, and out of the relationships which bind them all to each other in a web of friendship and familial love. The author's care to keep the characters paramount also ensures that all of the laughter carries with it the rueful recognition of ourselves in the people we see brought to life upon the stage. Many moments of this play feel uncannily like looking in a mirror.
Despite some minor difficulties, Domino Theatre's cast and crew mounted a cohesive, smoothly-running show which seemed far shorter than its 100-minute running time. Unlike the last production I saw, this company ran the entire show without intermission.
That's a good place to start, because the play is definitely naturalistic, and as definitely requires three settings -- Anthony's kitchen, Rosemary's kitchen, and an outdoor shed with at least a deep eaves under which the characters can shelter from the rain. In an ideal world with near-unlimited time and money and an ideally-equipped space, this could best be done with a revolve.
Domino's solution was effective, with a technical caveat. When we arrived in the theatre, we saw the kitchen and sitting area of the Reilly home, with Tony's armchair situated forward of the kitchen table. This box set was placed over at stage right, with the stage left wall angled very sharply away from the room so that audience on the far side of the theatre could see the space. At the outer end of the angled wall was a separate, smaller set piece which created the shed and its roofed entrance. At the end of the first act, the shed was rolled across from stage left to stage right and the angled wall was pivoted around to the opposite angle so that we now saw the Muldoon kitchen on the stage left side of the space. All this took place in a matter of seconds, and allowed for the entire play to flow smoothly without the intermission break that would normally take place at this point.
But...
(you just knew that was coming, didn't you?)
…that rolling set piece didn't roll quite far enough, and about 20 seats at the front corner of the auditorium were left with only a partial view of the Muldoon kitchen. I was told that one audience member called the second half of the show "a nice radio play" because she couldn't see most of what happened in that kitchen. Well, we all know that live theatre without glitches just does not happen, especially when transferring a show into a totally unfamiliar space with only the one work day to make it all cohere.
Note: For those not familiar with the Festival format, each group
gets to enter the theatre for the first time at 8:00 am on their
performance date. They have 9-10 hours to put up the set,
aim and focus lights, test sound levels, run through critical
sequences for technical purposes, give the actors a chance
to work and rehearse on the unfamiliar stage, and then
get out of the hall so that the house management can clean
and set the auditorium before the 8:00 pm performance.
The company then has to strike their entire production
out of the theatre after the show, to leave it ready for the
next day's company to enter.
Visually, the set showed us two old-fashioned and well-lived-in country cottages. I wondered if the director and designer had interpreted the "next door" of the script to mean "two halves of a semi-detached house," because the two rooms were nearly mirror images of each other and similar in the basic décor of walls and shape/size of windows. Set dressing and props were well-chosen for colour and for age -- the old-fashioned "portable" tube TV was a good example.
Lighting effects and settings were effective. The lighting plot created a warm but not-over-bright interior for the two kitchens, and a much more subtle look with a good practical light for the shed. The lightning special was believable too.
Music tracks employed throughout the show were well-chosen for their emotional content. Sound levels were excellent for the music, but at one point the very believable soundscape of outdoor animal/bird sounds was a bit too loud for the actors on the shed set.
The relationships among the four characters were strongly drawn by this cast. As the play opens, Aoife Muldoon has just buried her husband, Christopher. Although the opening conversations flow from this event, he is soon left behind as the two parents (Aoife Muldoon and Tony Reilly) cope with their own illnesses and impending ends while their children (Rosemary Muldoon and Anthony Reilly) face the possibility of middle age alone extending into their own old age.
But then there are the emotional undercurrents, which extend across the invisible boundaries between the two homes as well as between generations in each family. The company did an excellent job of letting us see and sense those undercurrents long before the dialogue clued us in to what was actually going on.
David Hurley played the bluff and blustery Tony with plenty of verbal vim and vigour to contrast with his elder's difficulty of movement. Hurley's splendidly clear voice and diction allowed all of his lines to register. He made us totally believe in this man who says whatever crosses his mind, not so much because he doesn't care what anyone thinks of his words, but because he has no clue that anyone else even has a thought in their heads. In his final moments, there was real poignancy in his announcement that he hadn't loved Mary (his wife) but had married her only "because she would have me." A moment later, the balancing description of the moment when he realized that he truly had come to love her was both heartfelt and beautiful in the poetry of his voice.
Geoff Johnson played the painfully shy Anthony in such a way that his voice sounded like a weaker, less certain echo of his father. This Anthony blustered too, but with far less assurance, conviction, or pomposity. In the second act, I could totally relate to his shyness and inability to see where Rosemary was trying to steer him. The moment when he announced why he had bought the flashy metal detector became terribly real, as his emotion drove him to burst through the wall of shyness and self-abasement and state for the first time (albeit indirectly) that he loved Rosemary.
Sandie Cond drew all eyes from her first entrance as Aoife Muldoon. Although her old-fashioned mourning garb was eye-catching, what really caught my attention was her intent, aware facial expression. Here was a woman who would always hear more than was said, and see more than what was shown. Her tart little remarks were nailed with impeccable timing, and her assurance and authority in every pronouncement were most believable. It was also plain that Aoife knew exactly what Rosemary was trying to achieve in Act 1, and quite likely figured it out without Rosemary ever actually telling her.
While Outside Mullingar is plainly an ensemble piece, the Rosemary of Dympna McConnell gave this performance its strong centre of gravity. The angry spitfire of Act 1, the depressed farm spinster, the graceful swan, the longing soul awash in romantic yearning, all these elements combine to create a complex and oddly appealing character. McConnell's great strength came from the assurance with which she inhabited each of these complex emotional centres, making every one in its turn utterly believable. The flexibility of her vocal tones had not a little to do with the reality of her performance.
The cast as a whole team achieved splendid results in their accents. The previous production I saw included one genuine Irish brogue which was too thick to carry well off the stage. I felt that these accents, while perhaps not 100% genuine, were all clearly Irish while remaining clearly understandable to the non-Irish ear. The acid test for me is whether the inherent musicality of English spoken by Irish people can be heard -- and I definitely heard that music at many key points in this show. This is one situation where I have always felt that the theatre ought to err on the side of realism rather than reality. And yes, there is a difference.
Director Ian Malcolm achieved some splendid stage pictures on this unusual set, and crafted a well-paced production. With plenty of ebb and flow in the rhythms, there was ample variety but no sense of any slackness or dropping of the ball at any time. The cast created the ideal laugh pauses, the kind where you aren't aware that they are pausing for the laughs.
A final word on the unconventional choice to play the show as a single unit without intermission. While this was cleverly handled, I felt it was unnecessary. There is a significant and clearly defined lapse of several years between Act 1 and Act 2, and during that lapse of time two dramatically important events occur. The intervening deaths of Aoife and Tony change the circumstances of Rosemary and Anthony so materially that continuity between the two acts is not important, and in fact not desirable.
But overall, a splendid evening of entertaining, amusing, and thought-provoking theatre.
* * * * * * * * * *
Theatre Ontario Festival is an annual event which brings together the "best of the best" in Ontario's community theatres for a celebration of excellence. The four participating plays are invited as the winners of the four regional festivals. Each performance is adjudicated in detail by a professional theatre artist, in sessions which enhance learning and theatre experience for the performing company and audience alike. The adjudicator this year is Carolee Mason. Along with the performances, the Festival also includes workshops on various theatre topics, Playwright-in-Person readings, and other additional events. The week culminates with a celebration brunch when awards are presented.
Great review, Ken. I love that play - just saw Lost & Found Theatre's production in Kitchener.
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