Liquid Dreams

REVIEW: The Seafarer

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Published: May 26, 2009

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Though it's set on Christmas Eve, December would be the wrong time to produce Conor McPherson's The Seafarer: It's the anti-holiday play, a darkly nasty, albeit often funny, Irish fable that rises above its clichés to pack a wicked punch. Director David O'Connor's Arden Theatre Co. production softens the blow somewhat, but it still stings.

Richard (Brian Russell) hosts brother Sharky (William Zielinski) and buddies Ivan (Anthony Lawton) and Nicky (Joe Hickey) the night before Christmas. They're familiar characters: louts, losers, lushes (except Sharky, dry two days), content to spend the holiday drinking their fuckin' brains out. The first act meanders entertainingly as they bicker and bitch. Richard's blind since a Halloween Dumpster mishap; Ivan's wife has tossed him out again but he's more worried about his glasses; Nicky's the obnoxious twit who married Sharky's ex; and Sharky — who commands attention through Zielinski's riveting intensity — has led a miserable life that will soon be a lot worse.

When mysteriously natty, coolly omniscient Mr. Lockhart (Greg Wood) joins their poker game, McPherson's tale gains focus. Without giving away too much, suddenly lives are at stake — especially Sharky's — and the booziest talk reveals new layers of meaning, especially about long-buried secrets. None of these guys are angels, and some teeter on damnation's edge in a suspenseful match that confronts huge questions.

The wind rumbles (courtesy sound designer Jeff Lorenz) through scenic designer David P. Gordon's huge Dublin house, foreshadowing darker forces than alcohol and regret. At first, the ache evident from Zielinski's mesmerizing Sharky seems the loneliness of the only sober guy in the room, but as events threaten to swallow him whole, his pain is palpable. The others sometimes lighten the play when all that drink and despair ought to devastate them more. Wood's Lockhart equally fascinates, a counterpoint to their tipsy self-torture: Why work hard to tempt them, he realizes, when humans so willingly make their own hell?

(m_cofta@citypaper.net)

The Seafarer | Through June 14, Arden Theatre Company, 40 N. Second St., 215-922-1122, ardentheatre.org

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