Playwright: Martin McDonagh. At: The Gift Theatre, 4802 N. Milwaukee. Phone: 773-283-7071; $25-$30. Runs through: Jan. 30
There’s a reason why this play is so seldom produced—and it’s not just Martin McDonagh’s penchant for thinking up grotesque special-effects beyond the capabilities of most storefront companies (in this case, a collection of religious figurines melted in the oven of a shiny new kitchen range, with the appliance later shotgunned for its crime). No, the chief obstacle to McDonagh’s unpleasant tale of two bachelor brothers with nothing to do but get on each other’s nerves is that a lifestyle based in squabbling quickly ceases to be interesting to any but the abusive participants. Even the question of whether one of them murdered their equally bad-tempered Da fails to engage our sympathy, let alone curiosity.
Playing this material as grumpy-old-men comedy would ease the audience’s discomfort, but fortunately, Gift Theatre has veteran director Sheldon Patinkin helming their production. Under his guidance, John Gawlik and John Kelly Connolly carefully track McDonagh’s hidden clues to the continuance of Coleman and Valene Connor’s hostility: why, when they find each other’s company so repugnant, do these lonely middle-aged men still occupy the same house? What was the source of their acrimony? Is theirs a purely personal malaise or the product of a social environment so toxic that its once-abstemious parish priest has taken to drink?
This attention to text over attitude, coupled with the vantage offered by the Gift’s 30-seat room, allows us to discern the turning of the wheels in the minds of these characters—specifically, the brothers’ propensity to start quarrels just after a moment when one or the other comes too close to a genuine emotion, hinting at their bellicosity’s FUNCTION as a means of staving off pain. And the heightened focus on the victims infected by their misanthropy—Brittany Burch’s defiant Girleen Kelleher, peddling bootleg whiskey to finance her escape, and Paul D’Addario’s despair-racked Father Welsh, whose dying wish is for reconciliation—further evidences the festering cruelty endemic to existence in this barren coastal community.
Though not noticeably protracted in length, this grim parable is not easy to watch. Patinkin and his cast never let us make light of the Connor family’s troubles and the destructive fallout engendered thereby. Because without fully comprehending the agony inflicted by unexorcised demons, how are we to appreciate McDonagh’s almost-invisible ray of hope, bought at great sacrifice, pointing the way to a reluctant peace?