Brogue's Gallery
Those looking for more challenging theatrical fare will find it in the Amaryllis Theatre Company's A Terrible Beauty.
Not every play in December is holiday-themed and/or family-friendly (and this isn't the only month for treating the kids to theater). Those looking for more challenging theatrical fare will find it in the Amaryllis Theatre Company's A Terrible Beauty.
Artistic director Mimi Smith pairs two smartly designed, earnestly acted contemporary Irish one-acts that leave us pondering the nature of family, life's inescapable violence and the potential for forgiveness. That her company champions the physically disabled — both onstage and off — is incidental to A Terrible Beauty's success.
"Families," complains Pat (played by the superb Michael Toner, who's made a career of playing Irishmen), "are the curse of God." In Antoine O Flatharta's Blood Guilty , Pat feels burdened by blind brother Dan (David Simpson, who happens to be blind), but when two young men, also brothers, invade their home, Pat's deeper frustrations emerge. John (Stephen Patrick Smith) and Tom (David Stanger) play the amoral young brothers, as crippled by their dearth of beliefs as Pat is by his fractured idealism. Only Dan — clinging to a radio receiving broadcasts he can't understand, but which assure him that "there's a world out there" — senses any hope.
In Conor McPherson's monologue The Good Thief , Stephen Patrick Smith (with a different, yet equally convincing, brogue) nurses a pint and a bottle of Jameson while telling us why he's recently been freed from prison. As a "paid dog," hired by a local thug to scare people, he ends up saving a woman and child, a bloody event that nevertheless inspires a softer side he's never glimpsed. Smith reveals the struggle between everyday brutality and unexpected tenderness in this lost soul in an engrossing, disturbing performance.
Amaryllis makes the most of the Playground, the space adjacent to the Adrienne Theatre best known as ComedySportz's home. Dirk Durossette provides small, elegant settings, rich in wood tones, for both plays, warmly lit by Jerold Forsyth with costumes by Emily Capizzi and subtle sound by Christopher Colucci.
Together, the two plays reveal "a terrible beauty," not just about Ireland, but about the human condition — powerful ideas to ponder, even (or especially) in this holiday season. A Terrible Beauty is a fitting debut for Amaryllis in what will become their producing home as the new Playground resident company — a welcome development, especially since the Playground's future as a theater has been in doubt for a long time.
A Terrible Beauty: Two Irish One-Acts
Through Dec. 10, The Playground at the Adrienne, 2030 Sansom St., 215-717-2173, ext. 93, www.amaryllistheatre.org
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