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Unforgettable characters rule
‘The Cant’
By Colin Dabkowski
NEWS ARTS WRITER
Published:September 11, 2010, 12:00 AM
Updated: September 11, 2010, 8:56 AM  As subject matter for a dark comedy, you could hardly do better than the enigmatic group of nomads known as Irish Travellers. They are an unknowable people with no written history, no desire to establish themselves in the usual ways, doomed by their own Irish mode of wanderlust to roam the land in anonymous groups. On top of all that, these woebegone rovers are widely despised and mocked, among other things, for their stubborn refusal to put down roots. It is out of this tortured brood that Irish playwright Shay Linehan has drawn the unforgettable characters for his new play “The Cant,” a sadistic comedy that had its world premiere Thursday night in the Andrews Theatre, in a production by the Irish Classical Theatre Company. An American playwright might have treated this subject with stifling romanticism. But Linehan, true to his Irish heritage, has largely suppressed that tendency in favor of a multilayered and nuanced play that comfortably spans the adjoining realms of comedy and tragedy. After a brief introduction in the form of a video featuring Gerry Maher as an unidentified fireside storyteller, we meet the Dooley brothers. And won’t soon forget them. Crom (Patrick Moltane) and MikeyBoy (Brian Mysliwy) are a tragicomic duo for the ages, an unholy fusion of Abbott and Costello and Tyler Durden with just the right combination of idealism and ignorance to be instantly compelling. They’ve just inherited a disused bar from a mysterious figure whom the pair suspects was their father. But it comes with strings attached, in the form of Dan McGroary (Tom Zindle) and the corrupt police captain Sgt. Mulally (Vincent O’Neill), who exert various menacing influences on the well-meaning Dooley brothers. Meanwhile, we are treated to the even darker story of an ill-fated love affair between the brothers’ parents, Birdy Dooley (Josephine Hogan) and Paddy Dooley (Mark Donahue). What ensues is a well-plotted thriller that gets to the heart of the Irish Traveller’s intrinsic sorrow, their abuse at the hands of the powerful and the survivalistic instincts that keep them forever on the run. The use of video (by Brian Milbrand), while allowing us to view scenes that would have been impossible to mount on the theater’s adapted proscenium stage, takes us too far out of the theatrical mind-set and disrupts the play’s overall flow. The script’s disparate settings do not always transition from one to the next with the utmost smoothness, and there are some problems with characterization— notably in the character of the nurse. But it’s a testament to the power of Linehan’s writing and the skill of this production team and cast that these do not rank as crippling distractions. The performances, to an actor, are tremendous. As the brothers Dooley, the put-upon Moltane and bumbling Mysliwy set the gold standard for sibling rivalry. Their interaction in one drop-dead hilarious scene involving their interrogation by O’Neill’s Sgt. Mulally is not to be missed. Hogan and White make an utterly terrifying pair, while Zindle plays the lovable miscreant with serious aplomb. Donahue’s epistolary renderings of Paddy Dooley are case studies in sensitivity. Director Fortunato Pezzimenti has kept things supremely well-oiled and had the master stroke of incorporating Alen MacWeeney’s stunning photographs of Travellers at opportune moments. Ron Schwartz’s set, Brian Cavanagh’s lights, Tom Makar’s excellent sound design and Marie Hasselback Costa’s costumes played their background roles quite effectively. In the end, canny though it can be, “The Cant” reveals itself as a formidable achievement, both for the Irish Classical Theatre Company and for its gifted author. Theater Review “The Cant” Three stars Drama presented through Oct. 3 by the Irish Classical Theatre Company in Andrews Theatre, 625 Main St. For more information, call 853-4282 or visit irishclassicaltheatre.com. The Cant Premieres
at the Irish Classical Theatre Company
by Neil Garvey
Buffalo Rising
"It is a long road that has no turning." ~ Irish Proverb.
The Cant, the much anticipated winner of the Mr. & Mrs. Frank McGuire International Playwriting Competition, opened at the Andrews Theatre as a world premiere on Curtain Up! weekend in Buffalo.
It is the fervent hope of the producers that the competition, and this particular production, will put Buffalo and the Irish Classical Theatre Company on the map as an international center for theatre. It is a noble endeavor.
It's also a pretty tall order for any single play. Fortunately, The Cant succeeds as a compelling stage piece, with several performances which will likely be among the best you will see in this, or any season. Whether the play--which is by no means flawless--has the legs to sustain an international reputation, only time will tell. There is, however, no doubt that the author, Shay Linehan, is a very talented writer. This is a play well worth your time.
The story revolves around a mysterious, insular people in Ireland known as the Travellers. A gypsy-like group, also called "tinkers" (traveling tin-smiths) they are secretive and undocumented. Their secret language is known as The Cant. They have managed to barely subsist with cunning and deception--certainly the deception of outsiders, but self-dealt deception as well.
Mr. Linehan describes The Cant as a "Gordian Knot of revelation and concealment," and the play is an attempt to unravel that knot. To do this he has invented a wonderful cast of characters who inhabit three separate but mysteriously intertwined worlds.
"World One", situated in the far north wilds of Donegal, near the Ulster border, finds Crom and MikeyBoy Dooley, brothers who have inherited a seedy gin mill called "The Bend". This sorry excuse of a tavern was bequeathed to them by an infamous, somewhat mysterious local sportsman whom they suspect may be their father. The humble roadside bar offers the boys a once in a lifetime chance to settle down in one place, to have a home and center of gravity, concepts entirely foreign to them. They are soon confronted by Dan McGoary, a local bully with underworld ties who has his own interests in The Bend and its proximity to the border. Finally, the brothers are tormented by a police-guard named Mulally, a sadistic brute who represents the long and discriminatory arm of the law.
Actors Patrick Moltane and Brian Mysliwy infuse the brothers with a rollicking, explosive sibling rivalry. This may be the best comic duo Buffalo has seen since Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy graced the stage of Shea's. They are flawless. Tom Zindle's gangster, McGoary, creates a howlingly funny moment when his revolver misses its mark, the shadow of a gunman indeed. But when Vincent O'Neill is added to the mix as the wicked Sergeant Mulally, be prepared to hold onto your sides. There are some "who's on first" moments during the interrogation scenes that are pure comic genius.
The comedy, however, does not wholly betray the dark, cruel sense of prejudice and repression the Travellers suffer as society's outsiders. Guardsman Mulally is a study in the abuse of establishment power (actor O'Neill found his overbearing inspiration in nothing less than the antics of the Christian Brothers!).
That very oppression, in part, led the Travellers to establish a colony (of sorts) here in America, a place called Murphy Village in North Carolina. Here the Travellers could engage in their traditional trade, free from government obstruction, if not altogether free of their own web of secrets and distrust. This tidy township represents "World Two" of the Cant, and the main character is one Paddy Dooley, a mountainous man with a lumbering gate. He's a dangerous man, but with a gentle, sensitive side, and even a poetic quality.
Rochester-based actor Mark Donahue returns to the boards of Buffalo to give life to this complex man with an innate sense of tragedy and perseverance. His Dooley, eloquent and long suffering, has allowed his misfortune to keep him apart from his true love. He lives on the edge of a people who live on the edge of society. His secrets are so deep, even he is not fully aware of their depth and consequence.
Paddy Dooley's true love inhabits "World Three." Birdy Dooley, is a once lovely woman now in the last throes of senile dementia. Josephine Hogan, as Birdy, casts a vacant stare from her wheelchair, clinging tightly to a box which holds her most precious memories. Yet every so often, Birdy has a completely lucid moment, a clear recollection of her long lost freedom and she implores her now distant sons, Crom and MikeyBoy, to come back and take her away from the hellish nursing home, to take her back to her days of freedom on the road.
Birdy's tragedy is compounded by the tortuous conduct of her nurse, Janice, played with icy detachment by Katie White. Janice's cruelty is almost as unrelenting as it is inexplicable, but even at this low tide of human affairs, there is the splash of black humor which faithfully underscores the play throughout.
The complexity of the story line is matched by the complex challenges which must be overcome to produce this play. In many ways, the piece is an epic with a cinematic sweep. Several points of action are indeed cinematic in nature and are, in fact, presented on film.
Some of the physical production challenges, such as the lack of an absolutely essential trap door in the Andrews Theatre, are neatly solved by the innovative set by Ron Schwartz. His proscenium stage, built high across an entire wall of the theatre, simply adds a trapdoor--voila! Mr. Schwartz outdoes himself with the bar room he has created. With dingy wallpaper, potbelly stove, and brass spittoons, the place fairly reeks of musty curtains and stale beer.
From the saloon, the stage sweeps downward to the existing floor level of the center stage, providing ample space for the separate actions of Birdy and Paddy Dooley.
As for the more celluloid-like episodes, the window above the bar serves not only as a sign for "The Bend", but it very cleverly conceals a screen, where various images are projected throughout the play. The use of multimedia techniques in a stage play is still a hotly debated technique. The great advantage is that film will take the viewer to places that a live stage cannot. The misgiving is that reliance on such mechanical devices can dilute the stage presence and take an audience out of the theatre. It's a delicate thing to balance and is only modestly achieved here.
The gamble to project images was doubled down at the very start with the play's opening sequence, featuring Gerry Maher as the storyteller. Sitting before a roaring campfire, this vagabond-like figure begins the story of the Travellers and sets the stage for the ensuing action. The audio quality was poor, which is unfortunate in the Andrews Theatre, a space that is already acoustically challenged.
Minus an actual roaring fire, this opening scene might have been staged with equal--or better--effect live and on stage. Some of director Fortunato Pezzimente's other film sequences were more successful, particularly an interrogation on a bridge (both scary and funny), and the ultimate moment of terror, which eventually brings down the house of Dooley, figuratively and literally.
Also compelling were a treasure trove of Traveller images taken by international photographer Alen MacWeeney, but even these splendid pictures, enlightening as they were, appeared to roll on in a loop, and thus compete with the actors on stage. Mr. MacWeeney's historical images were a serendipitous find, but all that glistens is not gold and a more judicious application of them might have served the play better.
The mutli-dimensional structure of The Cant is such that any added "distraction" may well be unwelcome. The play has three distinct stories unfolding in separate places and even in separate time frames. It is something of a three-ring circus and it's not immediately clear who is who and what they are about. Some of the interconnection is obvious, such as that of Birdy and Paddy, who were once lovers. Other relations are more tenuous and only come into focus gradually. The reason for Nurse Janice's vehemence, for example, which seems gratuitously sadistic, becomes clear only very late in the game, in an "Agatha Christie" moment of revelation which seems to take place somewhat out of the blue.
Different audience members will see things differently, in this case not only as the result of one's personal interpretation of the story, but because of the actual sightlines from one's seat. Indeed, as I looked out at the audience while I was seated house left, the people sitting to the sides on the left and right often bobbed their heads as if watching a tennis match in order to take in both the projected image above and the live action on the stage below, whereas the house center's vantage point allowed for a more comprehensive point of view of the projected images and actors on stage.
In truth, the flicker of the screen images became less distracting as the play progressed (and the characters came into their own). Still, the notion that a stage play is somehow reliant upon external imaging to complete the story is at odds with the very nature of live theatre and is especially curious for a play that has just won a playwriting competition.
Sometimes a play is served up as a fine vintage in a crystal stem, and sometimes a play makes one stomp the grapes. Either way, the result can be very satisfying. The Cant will require your undivided attention, and you will have to stomp a grape or two, but it is a play well worth the effort.
Ultimately, this is an excellent production. The performances are all top-notch, the characters are compelling and very human, as is their story. The dialogue is witty, often poetic, and the twists and turns the author constructs are damned clever. There are plenty of turns on this road to hold one's attention. The Irish Classical Theatre, the competition's patrons, and the author should all be very proud.
The Cant, by Shay Linehan, presented through October 3rd at the Andrews Theatre. Directed by Fortunato Pezzimente, set by Ron Schawrtz, lights by Brian Cavanagh, sound by Tom Makar, costumes by Marie Hasslelback Costa.
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Neil Garvey, attorney/actor/writer, is a native East Auroran and 30 year resident of Buffalo's Elmwood neighborhood. Long involved in the cultural & civic life of Buffalo, he has served on several theaters & civic boards, including the Delaware Park Steering Committee. The first board chair of Shakespeare in Delaware Park, he served as the company's first CEO and appeared in or produced some 25 Shakespeare plays. Stage credits include Shea's, Studio Arena, The Kavinoky, The Irish Classical, Road Less Traveled, and played Santa Claus for the BPO Holiday Pops for the past eight seasons.
The Cant
by Anthony Chase,
ARTVOICE, September 16, 2010
Shay Linehan’s highly anticipated play, The Cant, is now having its world premiere on the stage and in the seats of the Irish Classical Theatre Company at the Andrews Theatre. This show offers enough plot for three Mexican soap operas. It also has enough set for two French farces, and enough video for a National Geographic boxed set! The story follows members of a family of Irish “Travelers,” a wandering people of mysterious origin who have their own language, called “the Cant.” They make their living in such professions as recycling scrap metal and trading horses, and are notorious for running scams. Generally unwelcome in the communities through which they pass, they are, reportedly, discriminated against more than any other people in Europe. The play follows a pair of twin brothers, Crom and MikeyBoy, Irish Travelers who are startled to learn that they have inherited a pub. This unlikely opportunity to join the land of the landed inspires fantasies of stability, stasis, and respectability for the young men. That’s the setup. But there are complications aplenty on the next page, and on the next, and on the next, and on the next in this sprawling yet endearing script. The previous owner of the pub has left unsettled business with some unsavory characters. The local keeper of the law doesn’t want any Travelers moving into town. Add to this a parallel plot in which the boys’ mother, in flashback, tells her life story to a sadistic nurse. And there is yet another narrative, in the more remote past, in which the mother’s missing husband writes to tell her tales of life among the Travelers of Murphy Village, South Carolina. These stories will link together by the time we reach the thrilling melodramatic conclusion. But there are miles to go before we get there. Most new plays are overwritten on their first outings. Since this play is the first winner of the new McGuire International Playwriting Competition, a lucrative prize that the ICTC hopes will be prestigious some day, it is important to establish its virtues. The narrative threads of The Cant, while tangled and occasionally inconsistent, are intriguing and enjoyable. The characters are vivid and engaging. The use of humor is deliciously appealing. There are flashes of moving theatrical brilliance, as with the magical reciting of the Lord’s Prayer in English and in the Cant; the mystical evocation of “Our gathra, who cradgies in the manyak-norch,/We turry kerrath about your moniker” is stirring. And the acting, under the direction of Fortunato Pezzimenti, is uniformly excellent. Patrick Moltane and Brian Mysliwy play Crom and MikeyBoy, the “lucky” and witless twins, with winning energy. Tom Zindle deftly plays nasty and reckless Dan McGroary, a man with more guile than…a Traveler. His mercurial nature, nimbly articulated by Zindle, provides the emotional temperature for this pitch black comedy. In a similar vein, Vincent O’Neill is alternately hilarious and terrifying as a corrupt and unscrupulous police officer. In the narratives from the other time frames, Josephine Hogan is both dear and terrifying as Birdy Dooley, the boys’ aged mother whose sentimental renderings of life as a Traveler belie a manipulative nature and a heart as cold as steel. Katie White becomes a horror icon as her abusive nurse. Mark Donahue gives two distinct and equally able performances as the same character in two time frames, Paddy Dooley, Birdy’s wandering husband. Brian Milbrand’s video, practically a character in its own right, is impressively polished, and deserves an airing of its own. A climactically structured melodrama at its core, The Cant is framed with multiple subplots and parallel narratives, which invite either minimal staging or a film. The ICTC production seems to favor the latter, and the results bog the production down and emphasize the script’s overgrown and over-plotted elements. The ICTC has seldom seemed quite comfortable on the circular Andrews stage. There is not a moment of The Cant that could not have been handled minimally, using nothing more than imagination, and making better use of the space to achieve cinematic fluidity. This includes the scenes with the trap doors, the scenes in the van, the trips down to the cellar, the explosions, the scene on the bridge, and the narrative of the camping traveler—not to mention the subplots that also command their own swath of stage space. I think of the musical Les Miserables, famed for its enormous production qualities. Nonetheless, at the climactic moment when Javert throws himself from a bridge to his death in the River Seine, there is no scenery, just an actor and a light and swelling musical score. Sometimes less truly is more. I think of Howard Korder’s Search and Destroy with its echoes of Roman Polanski’s Chinatown and Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil, about a man on the run from the law—performed on the empty Circle in the Square stage with nothing but a few chairs and the double yellow line of a highway down the center. Such staging gave that script a grace and swiftness that The Cant also needs, without sacrificing the vividness that the mind’s eye provides. Of course, without having attended rehearsals it is impossible to know how much trimming has occurred already. Still, The Cant is a thrillingly ambitious play by a marvelously talented playwright. Its more original gestures fire the imagination with what might become of the script after further development. From Speakupwny.com Reviews
THE CANT Irish Classical Theatre Company
By Augustine Warner
Sep 17, 2010, 02:53
Through October 3
Across Europe, one of the most complex issues in the European Union is the people who won’t succumb to the French-style bureaucracy of the EU. Most visibly they are the Gypsies or Roma. There are other groups, especially the Travelers of the British Isles, known to the Irish as Tinkers.
They don’t ride around behind a horse any more, their wagons replaced by van trucks.
They resist regulation and schools and almost everything the government wants to impose on them and don’t think any laws apply to them.
That’s why MikeyBoy Dooley (Brian Mysliwy) and Crom Dooley (Patrick Moltane) become so surprised when they inherit a pub along the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, far out in what the British during “The Troubles” called “Bandit Country.” In Shay Linehan’s “The Cant,” the brothers are suspicious about the inheritance and why they received it and are completely justified.
Linehan has created a twisting tale about a tangled Traveler family both in Ireland and in (surprisingly) South Carolina. Their father Paddy Dooley (Mark Donahue) has been missing for years, fleeing to England after a scuffle and moving on from there. They don’t seem to know their mother Birdy (Josephine Hogan) is in some sort of nursing home being abused and monitored by sadistic nurse Janice (Katie White).
Shortly after getting to the pub, The Bend in the Road, the brothers discover an arms cache in the basement and meet an IRA guy, Dan McGroary (Tom Zindle), who’s in the vicinity and looking for the arms. They also meet the sadistic local policeman, Sgt. Mulally (Vincent O’Neill) whose place in this cloudy picture isn’t clear although he shows a lust for violence and torture.
The story is told by a mix of MikeyBoy and Crom on stage and Paddy telling the story of his life in a series of letters to Birdy. That’s another plot complication.
There’s aIso the mixing in of video and images on a large screen, scenes of mad drivers, torture and violent death. It’s an interesting mix of stage and screen and really does help tell the story, with much of the footage deliberately shot to look old, looking like some home movies when I was a kid. If you really know this area you can figure out where the scenes were shot, even if they are supposed to be mostly Ireland.
I was suspicious “The Cant” would turn into one of those depressing and depressive Irish plays and it doesn’t. Linehan has written a twisting and turning story, with complications of plot and geography and history. You really don’t need to know much recent Irish history to understand the play but some background in “The Troubles” can help.
There may be a few too many plot twists but director Fortunato Pezzimenti has done a nice job of keeping the tangled path weeded enough to keep everything moving quickly and swiftly. He also has a strong cast to work with, especially Moltane and Mysliwy, Donahue, O’Neill, Zindle and White.
Besides the video footage, there’s a very strong set from Ron Schwartz and really nice lighting from production manager Brian Cavanagh.
“The Cant” is really worth seeing and if you are wondering about the title, it’s the secret language of Travelers.
"The Cant"By Shay Linehan
Presented by Irish Classical Theatre Co. Review by Willy Rogue Donaldson, Night-Life Magazine This is a complex peach of a play with a nose of madness, a fine body of humor and violence, romance, secrecy, brotherly love, the I.R.A. in prison and at home, and with lingering flower notes of surprise and long-distance-love. Presently we are in a village in Ireland, across the river from Northern Ireland, and at a bend in the road, a deserted pub, a mystery. Two guys are trying to break in, they do, here starts the story.
This is the story of one extended family from a group of nomads called Travellers (also Tinkers, but not Gypsies) who have long moved about the countryside as a sort of permanent underclass, having their own secret language, the Cant. They are considered disreputable by the settled folk, and modern technology and superhighways are reducing their numbers, but some still exist and roam with their own ways. Time wanders with them in the play as past and present overlap. And sometimes the action and mood wanders from stage to screen and back, quite effectively with photography from Alen MacWeeney and video designed by Brian Milbrand. Sure now read the whole Playbill, there are other stories there.
So the two guys who break in are the brothers Dooley, lets have a few pints, ma has died recently and dad disappeared years ago, a stranger shows up and gets shot in the bum, the sheriff interrogates, the brothers are threatened, it all rollicks on and gets darker when they go out on the bridge. Meanwhile, in other scenes, we see what dad has been up to in the U. S. and hear the letters he wrote to ma, and what ma experienced in the nursing home before her death. She was attended by Janice, the crisp young blonde nurse who’s just a tad deranged. Perhaps she’s an alter ego of the playwright, as she’s writing down everything ma says, hoping to write a gypsy romance and get rich.
My companion Miss Delicious wasn’t too interested in the women, thought that story a bit ponderous, but she prefers the men anyway and early on focused her fond gaze on MikeyBoy Dooley, played by Brian Mysliwy, a great actor in a magnificent cast. MikeyBoy was the younger impetuous brother, a bit thick, which bothered Miss Delicious not a whit. It’s not always easy for a smart actor to play a dim bulb, but Mysliwy is both credible and funny, as are the playwright’s lines for MikeyBoy.
The smart and practical brother was Crom, played by Patrick Moltane, although Crom has a lot to learn in the play, but learn he does. Moltane quickly establishes Crom as the leader of the two, and gives him sturdy emotional depth. Playwright Linehan writes a fine loving and interdependent relationship between the two brothers, who obviously grew up taking care of each other. And he uses Crom to show a Traveller weighing the idea of a physical home. Note the raked (slanted) stage used, all the actors in the bar scenes have to adjust to this and do it so well the audience forgets the stage is raked. Set Design by Ron Schwartz.
Ma, Birdy Dooley, is an invalid woman played by Josephine Hogan, who reveals Birdy mostly in contradiction to nurse Janice’s expectations of her. Hogan holds Birdy back in a situation that forces her to adjust to Janice’s changing moods. Which allows Hogan to dramatically surge at the end. Katie White captures well the prim but dangerous Janice, who early on murdered her little brother, and now wheels Birdy Dooley around in a wheelchair, her blonde hair getting a little wilder in each scene, looking slightly like she stuck her finger in a wall plug, perhaps more than once. A sweet visual flourish for the fair Katie White.
Paddy Dooley, a sweetheart with a temper in a big body, is played by Mark Donahue in a stellar performance. Paddy informs us of life as a Traveller around the U.S and in an American prison, and he recites aloud his loving letters to his wife Birdy.
Vincent O’Neill has a lark playing Sgt. Mullaly, who develops an affection for his victims after bullying them. Particularly since he can come and bully them again. Later O’Neill shows how his character can cravenly adjust to a change in power status. Bluster and Fluster, grandly acted.
Director Fortunato Pezzimenti has excellently organized and designed the production, working with the best in cast and crew.
Shay Linehan has written a fine prize-winning play. It has too many parts, too many tones, too much overlay in the female story lines. But he throws out a Dickensonian joy in his characters, and boils slapstick, mystical meanderings, political underpinnings, a love story, and a pirate adventure into a bony rascally stew. And he both challenges and delights an audience. I bet it’s even better on the second serving.
Great Explosions.
Review by Willy Rogue DonaldsonCopyright 2010 all rights reserved
Except first printing in Night-Life Magazine in September 2010
Rocket Man Sept. 18, 2010 ‘The Cant’
Irish Classical’s world premiere of “The Cant” includes one of the most burstingly funny scenes ever to dissolve a Buffalo theater audience.
A sadistic policeman, played to a vibrating chill by Vincent O’Neill, is trying to intimidate two not-so-bright brothers by explaining how a frog tossed into a bubbling pot will leap to safety, but a frog in water heated slowly won’t notice until it’s boiled.
“And that’s not good for the frog,” he concludes.
The point of this amphibious parable is that gradual change bears more peril than revolution, but the brothers, particularly the eager and naïve MikeyBoy, take it literally, demanding irrelevant details. Brian Mysliwy’s brilliant rendering takes simple, optimistic Mikeyboy places perhaps not even playwright Shay Linehan envisioned.
The scene is part Abbott & Costello, part “Mice and Men” and part Betty White’s Rose from “Golden Girls.” By the time O’Neill’s “guard” throws in the towel, Irish Classical audiences are shaking the Andrews Theater harder than the passing Metro.
Linehan’s play, which takes its title from a secret language of Gypsy-like “Irish Travelers,” works this theory into overtime. Intensifying by degrees, the playwright serves, ultimately, a fiery dish of alienation, abandonment and betrayal culminating in violence too big for the stage.
To handle the overflow, “The Cant” is part movie, as well. Early on, a screen projects the lads’ odyssey to their just-inherited pub, fading to black as they arrive. Later projections depict life in Murphy Village, the Travelers’ American outpost; a South Carolina “slammer”; a frightening scene atop a Michigan Street bridge and, ultimately, the fiery conclusion which, if staged live, would be “not good for the theater.”
Hence, patrons may feel they’ve been pointed in one direction, then led in another. With references to old infidelities, communications breakdowns and the Emerald Isle’s eternal strife, “The Cant” has more plots than Forest Lawn. Sometimes it’s as clear as a freshly-poured Guinness, and at Thursday’s talkback Artistic Director O’Neill told a sold-out throng that “we’re still trying to make sense of it.”
From time to time Linehan lightens the load with atrocious puns: “Many are cold but few are frozen,” and another about the word “arsenal” which barely makes the margins of a family newpaper.
Linehan’s characters are intricately written and breathtakingly played – particularly Josephine Hogan as wheelchair-bound mother Birdy, Katie White as the nursing-home aide of the sort who inspires malpractice ads, Patrick Moltane as the protective brother and Tom Zindle as the mysterious and manipulative “go-between” McGroary.
“The Cant” and its $20,000 prize have made ICTC the talk of all Ireland and as a midweek show was sold out, Buffalonians are warming, and that’s good for frogs of all stripes. It runs through Oct. 3.
EIGHT ROCKETS (out of 10)
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