The cast of American Stage Theatre’s production of Conor McPherson’s “The Seafarer” includes, from left, Steve Garland, Richard Coppinger, Brian Webb Russell, Tom Nowicki and Christopher Swan.
Closing out the 2009-10 American Stage Theatre Company season is Conor McPherson’s dark Irish comedy, “The Seafarer,” playing through Aug. 15 in the Raymond James Theatre, 163 Third St. N., St. Petersburg.
Performances are Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, 7:30 p.m.; and Friday and Saturday, 8 p.m. Matinees are Saturday and Sunday, 3 p.m. Tickets range from $26 to $45 depending on date and time of performance. Call
Todd Olson directs “The Seafarer,” a 2006 play set on Christmas Eve in Baldoyle, a coastal suburb north of Dublin. James “Sharky” Harkin, an alcoholic whose life has been a long series of disappointments and failures, returns home to take care of his blind, aging brother, Richard Harkin. Attempting to avoid the bottle during the holidays, Sharky is haunted by his conscience and incessantly denigrated by his brother.
What opens as a run-of-the-mill exposition satirizing dysfunctional Irish brothers suffering through a whisky-drenched holiday gathering quickly becomes something of a modern-day morality play when a shadowy stranger arrives. Richard insists upon playing a game of cards – and for Sharky, the stakes are high: He soon learns he may be playing for his very soul.
Richard Coppinger, whose performances in the Stageworks productions “Frozen” and “Shining City” earned him praise, plays Richard. Coppinger strikes the perfect balance between bitterness and comicality to keep the character from being entirely heartless. The actor is particularly effective in illustrating how Richard exploits his impairment to manipulate those around him.
Christopher Swan stars as Richard’s brother, Sharky. If Sharky is a man lost in penitential exile, Swan does an exceptional job at shouldering the character’s guilty conscious in his performance. Swan efficiently illustrates Sharky’s burden: A lifetime of bad decisions can be extrapolated from his drooping shoulders, his somber expression and his often down-turned gaze.
Supporting actors Brian Webb Russell, playing Ivan Curry; and Steve Garland, portraying Nicky Giblin, give strong performances. Russell’s Curry adds an element of physical comedy whether he’s feigning nausea or stumbling around the set searching for misplaced glasses. Garland, who was last seen in American Stage’s “Driving Miss Daisy” earlier this year, is a force of nature on stage, sometimes overwhelming fellow actors as he embraces his character’s boisterousness.
And then there is the nefarious Mr. Lockhart, played by Tom Nowicki.
Nowicki’s is a soft-spoken Miltonian Devil, indignant and unforgiving. In describing Hell to an inquisitive Sharky, he delivers one of the most powerful monologues in the play, evoking intense imagery of a “space that’s smaller than a coffin” found “a thousand miles down just under the bed of a vast, icy pitch black sea.” Nowicki sends shudders through the audience with his rendition of this dark oratory – a centerpiece of McPherson’s play about living with “blistering shame” and struggling to find redemption.
As an ensemble, the actors shine brightest in the second act, working together to propel both the dark humor of this dysfunctional group and the underlying peril facing Sharky.
The set design, incidentally, is sheer genius. Probably the most elaborate design since American Stage moved to the new theater, Allen Loyd and his team have done a brilliant job creating this dingy house, complete with a filthy kitchen and stains that appear to have been congregating for years.
Boasting both a Faustian bargain and a Dickensian quest for salvation, “The Seafarer” draws to a close a successful season for American Stage.
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