The Toronto Sun, April 02, 2007
Dark tale shines brightly
By: John Coulbourn
Happily, physics isn't the only area in which every action is matched by an equal and opposite reaction.
Consider the world of Irish theatre, for instance.
While the vast preponderance of 20th century Irish stagefare -- at least the portion that has made it to the stages of Toronto and southern Ontario -- has glorified the loquacious and over-refreshed Irishman as a charming and largely harmless leprechaun, there have been other playwrights of the Irish persuasion who, though overlooked, have been hard at work, digging beneath the piles of Blarney to reveal the true underbelly of the beast.
One of those playwrights is Tom Murphy, and while it may have taken more than 50 years for his A Whistle in the Dark to make it to the Toronto stage in a 2005 premiere by The Company Theatre, it made an impression.
Theatrically speaking, it's a simple tale, with all the action unfolding in the livingroom of a small home in Coventry, England, circa 1960, a place and time simply and serviceably evoked by designer John Thompson and lit by Andrea Lundy.
It is the home of expatriate Irishmen Michael Carney (played by Jonathan Goad) and his British wife Betty (played by Sarah Dodd) and while it was once a place that framed their dreams of a better life, those dreams have been largely destroyed by the encampment of three of Michael's hard-drinking, hard-living siblings, played by Allan Hawco, Aaron Poole and Richard Clarkin, and their side-kick, played by Dylan Roberts.
As the play begins, the house is in an uproar as everyone prepares for the arrival of a fifth sibling, the beloved younger brother Des, played by Philip Riccio, who has made his way across the Irish Sea for a visit, in company with the patriarch of the Carney clan, played by Joseph Ziegler.
It is a reunion fraught with the tension of long-simmering family grievances, and fueled by heavy infusions of booze, ignorance and bravado, it quickly degenerates into horrible tragedy.
It is a powerful piece of theatre, and in staging it, director Jason Byrne encourages his cast to put full faith in the text, each cast member crafting a solid conduit through which Murphy's powerful story flows. Here, the play is the thing.
And while every performance is of a high calibre, there are, not surprisingly, those who stand out nonetheless.In his powerful portrayal of the Carney patriarch, Ziegler gives a breathtaking performance of brutal and astounding clarity, never once stooping to conventional stage tricks to redeem his character in any way.
And while the production is worth seeing on the basis of that performance alone, there is also added power in the scenes he shares with Goad, scenes that fairly crackle with an electricity that is anything but static.
There's impressive work too from Riccio, who successfully captures the boy and man at war in his character and from Hawco, who is, at times, truly, deeply and genuinely frightening.
And in a play that gives such short shrift to the distaff, Dodd could be forgiven for simply showing up, but instead, she crafts a performance of deep conviction and courage that is oddly moving.
In its unflinching determination to show life as it is, A Whistle in the Dark emerges finally not simply as an Irish story, but one with a far more universal resonance as well, capturing to heartbreaking perfection the fear and defiance of those who find themselves outside the established social order and desperate to find a way in or, at the very least, justify their exclusion.
In short, for all that it is often hard to watch in its brutal honesty, it is a play and a production that demands to be seen.