Plays - Review

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THIS LIME THREE BOWER
(BACK STAGE WEST)

Like Irish playwright Conor McPherson’ s the play The Weir and St. Nicholas, this is a modern version of Celtic storytelling. But it has the distinction of being perhaps the lightest and funniest of his plays. McPherson is fond of monologues, but here under Rand Marsh’s direction, the disparate speeches are handled so gracefully that the implied character interaction is made emotionally palpable. The story starts with Joe (Robert Andrus) who’s strongly drawn to a delinquent friend Joe’s brother Frank (Jeremy Stevens) helps their father run a local restaurant, and is resentful of a local bookie making his father’s life miserable. Local college teacher Ray (Seth Macari) is dating their sister, among many other impressionable students. When Frank decides to take action against the bookie, all three get involved in a crime that changes their lives in unexpected ways.
Stevens centers the play with a strong dramatic performance, making Frank’s action entirely sympathetic Andrus is perfectly cast as the sensitive Joe, with an Irish accent so accurate it occasionally lapses in impenetrability.  Macari, however, has the most entertaining role as the cheerfully debauched Ray, and he brings an admirable comic energy to the part.

Playwright Conor McPherson’ s Irish drama meditates on the dramatic theme of “ getting away with it” and asks whether our concepts of ethical behavior are even relevant. The play also offers a portrait of the Irish personality that is decidedly grim, the three very different souls here united only in their impulsiveness, lack of emotional awareness, and the jarring ease with which they betray. 

Director Rand Marsh ‘ s organic production of a series of monologues voiced by a trio of very diverse figures, whose stories gradually s cohere at an unexpected point. Youthful student Joe (Robert Andrus) develops a crush on a school pal who betrays him unexpected and profoundly. Meanwhile, his rascally older brother Frank (Jeremy Stevens) gets it into his head to rob the local book is, who’ s leaning on his father to pay up an overdue bet. The two brothers’ anecdotes and intertwined with yet another story, that of charming but
arrogant and hedonistic philosophy grad student Ray (Seth Macari), who plots to undermine a famous visiting philosopher so as to make a name for himself.

Like McPherson’ s better-known play The Weir, the drama’ s action is never depicted visually but is instead described within the stories characters’ recount. And, as in his other plays, the show’ s real star is the lushly blarney-ful, lyrical Irish writing, here used to develop themes of moral corruption and decay set within the context of daily decisions. The admittedly minor story flows over us in a dreamlike, slightly eerie manner, and by the end of the evening, we have learned almost everything there is to know about these people and why they do the things they do.

Marsh’ s staging is intimate and unobtrusive, the language allowed to speak for itself. And while moments are undermined by the actors’ occasional awkwardness at getting their mouth around the Irish brogue, the performances are vivid and believable. Macari’ s stunningly heartless Ray, who comes to the realization that he’ s more of a brute that an academic, is especially powerful, but so are Stevens’hot-tempered, instinctively reactive Frank and Andreus’ boyishly endearing Joe.

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