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Corktown ‘57
Reviewed by Paul Birchall
Odyssey Theatre
Through May 3
RECOMMENDED:
“The whole world’s in a state of chassis!” said Jack Boyle, the iconic Irish lotus-eating blackguard of Juno and the Paycock, Sean O’Casey’s great drama about the tragic flaws of an Irish family. O’Casey’s forbidable Irish shadow looms large over playwright John Fazakerley’s new, intermittently powerful play, which, like Juno melds the concerns and themes of “the troubles” – i.e., the conflict between the Irish and the English over Northern Island – with the splintering of an Irish clan. The difference is that Fazakerley’s fresh and surprisingly elegiac piece is set in Corktown, an Irish-American enclave in Philadelphia. The “chassis,” as Boyle might say, has made the crossing of the great pond to the land of liberty and freedom.
The play takes place in 1957, in the grocery store basement (nicely realized in dust and grubbiness by set designer Joel Daavid) belonging to young Frank Keating (John Ruby), who moved from Northern Island with the majority of his family some years ago. Frank’s business isn’t doing well, and it has put a strain on his marriage to beautiful, very American Janice (Natalie Britton). But when Frank’s elderly dad Mike (Nick Tate) is diagnosed with liver cancer, Frank tries to arrange a reconciliation between the old man and Frank’s older brother John (Andrew Connolly), who joined the royal paramilitary regiment “Blacks and Tans” to fight against the Irish freedom fighters. Mike has loathed John for decades – even though he took John’s money to pay for the rest of the family’s voyage to the US. John’s arrival from England puts him into immediate conflict, not only with the unforgiving Mike, but also with Frank’s older sister Katie (Rebecca Tilney), who has been supporting the IRA with funds siphoned from community bake sales.
There’s a lot about mid-20th century Irish politics here, but fortunately it’s supported by genuinely evocative performances. Admittedly, these politics can be hard to parse, but the conflicts between family are easy to identify with. If O’Casey wrote plays that sought to locate the essence of the Irish persona, Fazakerley’s purpose is the definition of the Irish-American immigrant soul. As a result, in director Wilson Milam’s atmospheric, yet shrewdly brittle production, the characters are full of personality and emotional nuance. Although the production suffers from occasionally inert pacing, the play artfully articulates the theme that you can travel as far as you like, but if you bring the same monsters with you, you’re just going to re-create the same hell you came from. And the dialogue possesses a warmth, humor, and sadness that does indeed capture the musical voice of Ireland, albeit in an American context.
As a work of character-driven drama, the work’s main pleasures arise from watching the conflicts between the old worlds and the new worlds, as in the tense relationship between Ruby’s sweetly naive, almost entirely assimilated American Frank and his old Irish rogue dad, played with deft, boozy abandon by Tate. Also compelling are turns by Tilney’s she-warrior, trading cookies for weapons, and bristling with grim, idealistic furor, and by Connolly, grimly pragmatic as the Irish native-turned British turncoat.
Corktown Players at The Odyssey Theater, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., WLA; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m.; through May 3. (323) 960-5770, https://plays411.com/corktown
