Irish Coffee Please, Hold the Accent

Okay, I have to admit to a fatal flaw in my genetic make-up: I’m not good with accents. That is, I have a lot of trouble doing a good one and, even more significant, I have difficulty in hearing them and understanding the English spoken behind them. Thus, my main problem with seeing Irish plays is that it takes me at least ten minutes before my ear adjusts to the rhythms of an Irish accent, especially if they are deeply regional like the one spoken in The Seafarer, Conor McPherson’s new opus at the Booth Theater on Broadway. Since I know this fact about myself I concentrate, hard, on the spoken word and make sure I can see the lips from which they issue. This helps somewhat, but it still takes some time for it to sink in and by that time I’m quite likely to be lost in the weeds around the edges of some Irish dialectic bog. This is not always true since I think it is a director’s job to make sure an accent, or brogue, is comprehensible to American audiences but, in this case, the author of the piece, Mr. McPherson, is also its director and I betcha he thinks all is right with the world in this regard.

Another caveat about this production is also personal and reflects on my own background. I just do not see the charm in abject drunkenness even though this seems to be a necessity in most modern Irish plays (although there is a strong precedence set by early “classical Irish” playwrights from Synge to O’Casey to Behan). Why are we supposed to be charmed by drunks who act like adolescent idiots, stagger around, don’t bathe, spill stuff, piss themselves, throw up, cheat on their wives and girlfriends and their own buddies, stealing whatever comes to hand, and gambling away their money, their self respect and even, in The Seafarer, their souls? Taint funny, son; it just taint.

I did like this play because it has a lot to say about how we screw up our lives and pay the price but, despite some rave reviews, I think the script has flaws that is reflected in the unnecessary length of it. I know it’s wonderful when a speech is flowing like fine wine, but at some point ya just gotta put a cork in it and quit wallowing in rhetoric for the sake of rhetoric. You made your point, for gawd’s sake, get on with it! Perhaps this could be corrected by hiring a director who is not as in love with the long-winded wordiness of his characters as is the playwright. But when they are the same person what’s a dramaturge to do? Yeah, that’s it, you leave everything in and hope for the best and smile when (some) critics rave.

The five-man cast is superb. It’s another coup of ensemble acting and, despite my not quite latching onto the accents at the beginning; they are a joy to watch. Two of them are half-in-the-bag at the opening curtain but the other three catch up soon enough and all five of them are very convincing drunks (even Death himself who seems to be taking a holiday and is scary as, well, hell). I suppose this is not all that easy to do but the fookin’ old rascals were charmingly funny to most of the audience who seem to have similar characters in their family trees and I heard several comments like, “wow, he reminds me of Uncle Charlie.” Well, I’m beating this drunken Gaelic horse to death and I’ll stop; see above about wallowing.

I am tempted to whine here about dealing with the half-price ticket booth on cold wintry days but that’s another blog altogether.