Based on a performance on Sat. Sept. 6, 2008
The show: The Seafarer was supposed to open last Friday, but Tropical Storm Hanna postponed the occasion till Saturday night. Because of the weather, you could say that tonight is the de facto opening of PURE’s long run of the play (through Oct. 4)
The Seafarer was written by Conor McPherson, the award-winning Irish playwright of such works as The Weir and Shining City, which PURE produced in August 2007. Around the same time, McPherson’s Seafarer opened in New York to rave reviews. It closed last spring.
The story: An alcoholic named Sharky (Rodney Lee Rogers) comes home to spend Christmas Eve with his elderly and oblivious older brother, Richard (Randy Neale), who’s also an alcoholic. In fact, everyone in The Seafarer has a drinking problem. Booze is their sin and savior. It soaks through every part of their lives.
We first meet Richard passed out on the living room floor. He never made it to bed after a night of boozing with Ivan (David Mandel), a lovable lug, who never made it home. Richard is recently blind after hitting his head on a Dumpster. Ivan is now blind, nearly anyway, because he lost his glasses while carousing. He’s afraid his wife’s going to kill him, but doesn’t do much to remedy the situation.
Sharky meanwhile is trying to stay sober. There are hints of a past life that he’s walked away from — bar brawls, a job he couldn’t hold on to, a girl he could never have. He has anger issues, we later learn, issues that stem from a violent childhood Richard seems bent on denying.
Sharky isn’t alone is harboring secret hurts. Ivan bears the guilt of a horrible and lethal fire that he may or may not be responsible for. Richard can’t face old age, bodily decline, and his deep loneliness. Each character is alone even when they are together. During this first act, in which characters are islands in a stream of whiskey and nursing Herculean hangovers, The Seafarer starts off by resembling Sarte’s No Exit — hell, it seems, is other people.
That is, until a stranger arrives.
The performance: I can’t say more about the story, because the arrival of this stranger (Mark Landis) is when Seafarer becomes more than a kitchen sink melodrama (though it obviously never had attempted Victorian-like decorum; it was, well, shit-faced from the get-go, after all). It’s more like a fable, like Benét’s “The Devil and Daniel Webster,” but instead of battle of wits and rhetoric, it’s a battle of chance and deception — Sharky has to bluff his way through a poker game to save his soul.
Rogers, as Sharky, has a gift for revealing his insides without saying a word. There’s a story unfolding on his face. His Sharky is a deft balance of tortured soul and fleeting hope for redemption. The surprise ending looked like a surprise to Sharky, too.
Mark Landis’ bad guy, Mr. Lockhart, really felt bad. Some people can’t believably pull off evil dudes, but he can. There was something threatening in his cool demeanor and flat accent, though I don’t know if the latter was intentional. It was effective, however, in distancing Mr. Lockhart with more formality than is already there. And I have to add my admiration for his eliciting of symphony. When this fallen angel, or whatever he is, waxes nostalgic for heaven, it’s touching.
Because Landis already pulls off being bad, he needn’t go overboard. When Mr. Lockhart reveals his evil intent to Sharky, Landis’ dropped the cool and sped up the pace, releasing acid with his lines. Problem is, he lost me. I couldn’t understand what he was saying.
Neither Mandel, as Ivan, nor R.W. Smith, who played Nicky, could pull of the Irish accent. Mandel seemed to have given up early on. Smith followed suit eventually. Even so, they provided comic relief while playing to weightier material when needed (Nicky is the new boyfriend of Sharky’s new girlfriend; Ivan might be an arsonist).
Randy Neale, as Richard, is the center of the story and he shone most brightly the night I saw the show. His accent, timing, and pace were terrific, as was his acting blind. His chemistry with Rogers, as his brother, was alive and thrilling. The added touch, innovated by director Sharon Graci, was to Richard’s misuse of a cane. During the whole play, it’s upside down. He appeared poised to slip and fall.
The judgment: Despite many good things about this The Seafarer, I give it a mixed review. And when I say mixed, I mean this was really good but not quite up to the standards that PURE itself has encouraged us to expect.
I should also acknowledge how big this undertaking is — it’s enormous. The entire first act is exposition. It’s a set-up for what comes later. Plus it’s being revealed by guys who are hungover and/or getting drunk. Each of the five actors, working in the “intimate” Lance Hall at the Circular Congregational Church, have to appear plausibly tanked but clear enough (to us) to set up the second half of the play — no easy feat.
That said, there was a palpable disconnect between the first and second act. The gears were not locking in place. The actors’ rhythm was off. They ran into each other’s lines. Something was misfiring.
Even so, I’m confident PURE will have ironed out some of the kinks by tonight. I’m told there was an honest and emotional meeting yesterday morning about how to improve the performance, where, and why. PURE prides itself on working through difficulty. In this case, this play, I’m told, is the hardest one they’ve attempted. Indeed, few in Charleston would have attempted such a difficult script.
The recommendation: PURE’s The Seafarer is not excellent by PURE’s standards, but touching and inspiring nevertheless. It’s a good bet that started slow but will likely end very strong.
The info: The Seafarer, Sept. 11-13, 18-20, 24-27, Oct. 2-4, 7:30 p.m.; Sept. 14, 2 p.m.; $10-$30 Lance Hall, Circular Congregational Church, 150 Meeting St. (843) 723-4444, www.puretheatre.org
For another perspective on The Seafarer, see Jon Santiago’s review.
