Kasey Mahaffey and ensemble (Photo by Craig Schwartz)
Reviewed by Steven Leigh Morris
A Noise Within
Through June 1
RECOMMENDED
In dark cape, wide-rimmed homburg hat, and brandishing a walking stick, Oscar Wilde (David Nevell) haunts both the stage and the imagination of Alfie Byrne (Kasey Mahaffy), a city of Dublin bus conductor and the protagonist in A Man of No Importance, the current production at A Noise Within. A 2022 musical based on the 1994 film starring Albert Finney and Rufus Sewell, the show features a book by Terrence McNally, music by Stephen Flaherty and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens.
The story being set in 1964 permits a retrospective look at the kind of anti-gay bigotry to which Wilde himself fell victim, decades earlier. Though not referenced in the musical, Wilde (once society’s darling) served a two-year sentence of hard labor from 1895 to 1897 after being convicted in a retrial (the first trial resulted in a hung jury) of “gross indecency.” Alfie, a full-fledged adult male who lives with his sister, Lily (Juliana Sloan) (hint, hint) is an Oscar Wilde superfan, reciting Wilde’s poetry to his captive bus riders, who don’t seem to mind their conductor’s eccentricities. Nor does bus driver Robbie (CJ Eldred). Their supervisor Carson (Neill Fleming), however, is of a different mindset. Perhaps with Mussolini in mind, he keeps asserting that the buses must run on time and, even in post-fascist 1964, feels such disgust when learning of Alfie’s possible homosexual leanings that he transfers driver Robbie to a different bus, ostensibly for Robbie’s protection, though Robbie had made no such request to be transferred.
All of this is set against the backdrop of the Catholic church in Dublin, which offers the basement space of the St. Imelda church for the presentation of plays by the “St. Imelda Players,” headed by none other than Alfie as artistic director. Wilde’s The Importance of Being is the troupe’s legacy mega-hit.
Alfie now plans to present Wilde’s Salome with its provocatively erotic “fan dance.” While Alfie insists this is art, church-goers and church authorities fear it is smut. Enter Adele \(Analisa Idalia), a new passenger on Alfie’s bus, and a refugee from a nearby village. Adele is fleeing an unrequited love affair that’s left both her reputation and her life circumstances up in the air. Alfie gloms on to her, seeing her as his Salome, though she has no stage experience.
This is all a morality play, though contrasted against morality plays of yore, its point is inverted: Stop judging people for whom they may love, the musical pleads, and stop judging what kind of art is permissible. The definition of “smut” evolves and devolves. Let the public, not public authorities, determine that definition, or we’re living in an age of — need it actually be said? — authoritarianism, which lies in bed with a kind of willful ignorance and arrogance.
It’s curious that this story first emerged as a film during the Clinton era, and the musical emerged during the Biden era. Does its pertinence to 2025 even need to mentioned?
Julia Rodriguez-Elliot stages a 13-actor ensemble in an excellent production of a musical that’s actually quite treacly in its simple-heartedness, like a story by Charles Dickens but with overtones of sexual repression and closeted impulses. Musical director Rod Bagheri leads a five-piece, onstage band with a musical balance that’s just right. The songs themselves are more about cadence than melody, with Celtic touches reminiscent of the American country songs of the late crooner from Austin, Texas, Nancy Griffith. (Her song, “It’s a Hard Life Wherever You Go” is set in Belfast, and at least two of this musical’s songs share its tonalities — “If we poison your children with hatred, then the hard life is all that they’ll know.)
The production is well-served Francois-Pierre Couture’s scenic design of portable set pieces, while Angela Balogh Cailin’s costumes bring home 1964 without a detour, or anachronism.
A Noise Within, 3326 Foothill Blvd., Pasadena; Thurs.-Sat., 7:30 pm, Sat.-Sun., 2 pm; thru June 1. www.anoisewithin.org Running time: Two hours and ten minutes, with an intermission.
