Allan Appel Photo
Kevin Smith, as Sharkey, and Peter Chenot as his maybe friend, Nicky in the New Haven Theater Co.’s production of “The Seafarer.”.
Not exactly looking forward to seeing certain relatives this holiday season? Irritated by that uncle who’s so certain about politics and love that when he hits the whiskey your ear is ringing with his 90-proof wisdom?
I have just the right pre-Christmas vaccine for you.
It’s the New Haven Theater Company’s inaugural show of the season, the great Irish writer Conor McPherson’s The Seafarer, which runs at the company’s English Market Building Theater on Chapel Street from Nov. 13 to Nov. 22.
Five drunken Irish guys, by turns charming and insufferable, gather to play poker on Christmas eve in the man cave of all man caves in contemporary Dublin. They imbibe, taunt, and torture each other so much in the name of family love that your own upcoming get-togethers are guaranteed to feel as paradisaical as The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.
What makes the drama very gripping and very Irish, besides its rich Dublin street talk, is that one of the poker players, appropriately named Mr. Lockhart, has more than a touch of the devil in him. He is, in fact, the genuine Mephisto himself, and the stakes on the table are not only bills, but souls.
Ivan, played by Scarpa, hands Richard, played by Lones, his blindman’s stick.
Or as Lockhart, played by a smooth George Kulp, says to the lapsed tee-totaling Sharkey, “We’re gonna play for your soul and I’m gonna win and you’re coming through the old hole in the wall with me tonight. Now get up.”
That old hole in the wall refers to both the ATM down the dilapidated block and the portal to hell. Only Sharkey, who 20 years before inadvertently killed a man in a bar fight and now is being called to account, knows this; his brother and the other boisterous and boozy guests are just celebrating Christmas Eve.
So what the hell is bothering Sharkey that he’s acting so strange?
“This is a play you want to over-rehearse,” said Peter Chenot at a rehearsal in the run-up to Thursday’s opening night. He’s the company member who plays Nickey and is the object of Sharkey’s ire because he’s inherited both Sharkey’s former girlfriend and his car.
Chenot was referring not only to the challenge of the brogue, the lilting Irish accents that all the actors are learning, but also to the physical demands of a play that has at least three fast-talking poker games in the last act.
Chenot said the repartee is as challenging, if not more so, than the machine-gun banter of Glengarry Glen Ross and other David Mamet works that the company has performed over the years.
“I love this play,” Chenot said, because “ultimately it’s about deep issues of the soul,” which is the measure of all great dramas.
Chenot loves the play so much that he (and other cast members) has done carpentry for it in addition to acting in it. They built their theater’s first very substantial set. Stairs go up out of the man cave, and there is a plaster wall painted a mauve that evokes the color of vomit.
Arguably the toughest role goes to Jim Lones (pictured), who plays Sharkey’s older brother Richard; his character is blind. Lones, who also played the drunken choirmaster in the company’s production of Our Town, said the biggest challenge for him is not the heavy load of lines, but Sharkey’s quicksilver explosiveness toward his brother, then his rapid change back to fraternal caring.
His character must be convincingly blind as he is led around by drunken family friend Ivan, played by Steve Scarpa. During a recent rehearsal Lones said he took his contact lenses out to help him enter the character. Another time he did part of a scene deliberately with his eyes closed.
“The difficulty is not reacting when someone hands you something,” he said.
While there are no women in the play — wives and girlfriends are only occasionally referred to, and not very flatteringly — there are two women running this show: the director, Deena Nicol-Blifford and the stage manager, Mallory Pellegrino.
“It takes a couple of women to keep these bozos in line,” said Kulp.
The remaining two plays of the season are John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt and a new play, The Cult, written and directed by NHTC member Drew Grey.
That all three of the company’s 2014 – 15 season offerings have religion as their focus reveals only what could work out in terms of cast size, rights, and actors’ availability to rehearse, said Chenot. There was no divine plan.
