The NIght Alive
Dark Comic Drama of Life on the Fringe in Dublin
By: Victor Cordell - Aug 25, 2024
Altarena Playhouse, one of the really fine community theaters in the Bay Area, has made a bold choice for its current offering – Conor McPherson’s “The Night Alive.” It arrives with accolades including the New York Drama Critic’s Circle Award for Best Play of 2014 as well as an Olivier Award nomination for the same. I respect these recognitions and often cite such awards, but at times, one wonders what criteria the judges (and reviewers) are guided by.
Ireland has long been a great font for literary excellence, perhaps drawing from Irish gift of gab. In contemporary times, with playwrights like Martin McDonough (though British born), Mark O’Rowe, and McPherson himself, we see numerous gritty, grimy stories of dysfunctional, marginalized people sometimes influenced by notions of the supernatural, which are characteristics that will split the play going public.
My wife and editor surprisingly liked this darkly comic drama, which surprises, as it’s not at all in her wheelhouse. By the end, I came around to being not unhappy about seeing it, because it does provoke but without providing a lot of what I consider entertainment. On opening night, the small audience dwindled somewhat at intermission, but those who stayed showed enthusiastic appreciation.
One of the great analytical bifurcators of plays is the distinction between the written play and the production. In this case, it is easy to argue that even though the content of the play may not appeal to some, it is thoughtful and well-written, sketching the world of the Irish underclass. We constantly feel the pressures of their tawdry lives with repeated references to beans in the cooker, trash bags strewn on the floor, and life’s savings hidden away in a tin box.
The production itself merits praise. The Katina Psihos Letheule-directed staging suits the environment to a T, and the acting is powerful and effective throughout the cast of five. Kudos go to dialect coach Sarah Elizabeth Williams, as all of the accents sounded authentically Irish to these ears, but because of their subtlety, they are all totally understandable.
Dublin-located “The Night Alive” centers on Tommy, a fiftyish divorced failure, alienated from his kids, who lives in a squalid rented room in his uncle’s house. Lacking fixed jobs, he and his slightly-mentally-challenged friend Doc, of no fixed address, get by living on scraps from society’s table with maybe a little grifting along the way. The triggering event is that Tommy has saved an unknown young woman Aimee from a beating by a man and brings her to his digs to recover. Tommy later learns that the perpetrator was her pathological ex-boyfriend, Kenneth, who will later appear and prompt some gruesome events.
A redeeming quality of the script is that with the exception of the unredeemable Kenneth, each character possesses some goodness. For instance, Tommy had no motive in intervening to save Aimee, but he did. In his complex relationship with Doc, Tommy tries to dupe Doc into accepting boxes of expired cigars in place of money owed for work done. But despite often telling Doc that the latter’s problems are not his concern, when the chips are down, Tommy presses money on him. In the end, many issues are unresolved, but there is some redemption for everyone.
John Tranchitella heads the cast as Tommy. Requiring a range of furious behaviors, Tranchitella hits all the right gruff notes as one who moves from one conflict to another. Dan Kolodny is Doc, and he excels at alternating between being wacky and clueless like in trying to explain how Doc is an abbreviation of his real name Brian, to giving a treatise on the creation of black holes and their effect on time, of all things!
Solid performances are also given by Sarah Jiang as the mysterious and conflicted streetwalker Aimee; Geoffrey Colton as Tommy’s uncle and landlord, the dapper drunkard Maurice, who spots a bag of turnips stolen from his garden under a cot, but doesn’t notice a body on the floor that he almost trips over; and Jonathan Covey as the loathsome interloper Kenneth.
“The Night Alive” is written by Conor McPherson, produced by Altarena Playhouse, and plays on its stage at 1409 High Street, Alameda, CA through September 22, 2024.