Suicides, murders, a school girl temptress, an alcoholic priest, and a raging feud between two brothers incapable of inhabiting the same room without a violent exchange make this a very touching and very tender play (seriously!). The well crafted black comedy, written by Martin McDonagh, takes place in the rural Irish town of Leenane. The play’s central vein of darkness pulses strongly throughout and is contrasted with some truly touching moments. The dialogue and situations the characters find themselves embroiled in elicit a continual stream of nervous laughter from the audience. This is a fun play, but is this production up to the material?
Cast
- Daesha Lynn “Girleen”
- Jason Warren “Father Welsh”
- Owen Conway “Coleman Connor”
- Mike Daily “Valene Connor”
A play like this requires an intensity from the actors that is difficult to achieve without falling into the trap of vocal histrionics and physical misshapenness. Director Matt Maenpaa’s work with the actor’s was technically good but slightly unrefined. The razor sharp line between not enough authentic emotion and physical and vocal over exertion is trampled over by every actor in the play for a majority of the moments that require a deft touch, which is unfortunate because I feel this group of actors is very capable of the material. Proof of their ability can be found in the quiet moments between Daesha Lynn (Girleen) and Jason Warren (Father Welsh). As a director you must impress upon your actor’s the need to stay in that zone of connection, especially in heightened moments which this play has many of. Maenpaa and this group may have gotten away with the over acting if there had been one or two heated exchanges but the whole play snow balls from one fight to the next until the lights go out. Maenpaa let his steeds run a little too wild and too loud even for this piece.
Maenpaa did an excellent job of designing the set- with the exception of a light hanging over a table which blocked the actor’s faces. His lighting design was less than impressive and left his actor’s in the dark for large chunks of action. This was especially frustrating at the beginning of the second act, when Lynn played the most touching and powerful moments of the play in near darkness. Although the lighting — as well as the performance of Warren — for Father Welsh’s reading of his letter to the brothers could not have been better. Overall each actor excelled when working alone yet floundered a bit when working off one another. Could that be a trapping of the Adler theatre work or the direction of the play?
The music proceeding the play and in between scenes was traditional rowdy Irish folk music. Good music but played much too loudly for my taste. There is some truly audacious destruction of the set which was surprising and a bit of overkill. Again, the actor’s weren’t taking the impetus to destroy from the scene and the heat of the moment but rather went about thrashing for thrashing’s sake.
To pull off a thick accent well and still allow it to be intelligible to an audience is an art unto itself. An art which each actor had in fits and bursts though not consistently. When rehearsing a play for several weeks a director can lose objectivity and a fresh eye on small details, and sometimes the large details that immediately throw an audience member seeing it for the first time. The accent work, although excellent, was one of the details I feel Maenpaa may have become accustom to which threw this audience member. Maybe if the theatre was more intimate and the audience closer to the stage we’d been able to understand the actor’s a bit better. Even then though it’s the actor’s job to go through the experience of the character and make sure the audience gets the playwrights words, which are very poetic in this piece.
The set designers and stage manager/crew deserve big kudos for cleaning up and accommodating the destruction that takes place throughout. They either have access to cheap dishes and figurines or super glue and lot’s of time on their hands to put things back together.
I’m familiar with the difficulties of staging a play and this group took some big risks in the pursuit of attacking many of those difficulties. They succeeded with many of those risks which was refreshing but went slightly overboard with others. Again this play can suffer from not enough intensity and this group went for it, balls out, in pursuit of serving the piece and you know what? They pulled it off. I’d much rather leave this piece with a ringing in my ear than with the feeling that the actor’s weren’t quite angry enough.
Stella Adler - Studio C Theatre
6773 Hollywood Blvd., 2nd Floor
Hollywood, CA 90028
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Written by Guest Writer Dutch K.
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