Thanks to the Mint Theater Company, I have been able to see dozens of long-neglected plays previously known to me only by their titles.
Although The Mint has only a modest budget to produce its shows, they are usually inventively designed and smartly staged. The Mint has broadened my theater knowledge and frequently providing me with a good time in the process. It is one of my favorite companies and I rarely miss a show there.
That said, every now and again The Mint drops a clinker, and such is the sorry case of The Mountains Look Different, which opened in its American premiere on Thursday at Theatre Row.
Originally produced in Dublin in 1948, The Mountains Look Different is not a terrible play, although its story soon turns obvious and its climax and resolution are terribly melodramatic. It is, at best, a fragile work that demands some fine acting and especially atmospheric staging to strengthen or at least camouflage its dramaturgical weaknesses.
[Read David Finkle’s ★★★★ review here.]
The Mountains Look Different has been directed by Aidan Redmond, a good actor seen in several Teresa Deevy plays staged by The Mint, among his credits. Apparently this production marks Redmond’s first time as a director and, boy, does it ever look that way.
Composed by Micheál mac Liammóir, the notable actor-writer-artist-designer who co-founded the Gate Theatre in Dublin, The Mountains Look Different happens on a farm in western Ireland. Here is where Tom (Jesse Pennington) returns home with Bairbre (Brenda Meaney), whom he has just married after only a brief acquaintance in London. Martin (Con Horgan), Tom’s dour old dad, is none too welcoming to the newlyweds.
As the evening ensues—the two-act play unfolds from sundown into dawn—Martin recognizes Bairbre as a tart he encountered some years earlier in London. Somehow the naïve Tom has no awareness of his wife’s past. Martin at first intends to expel Bairbre, then instead makes her an ugly proposition. Let’s say no more, except to note that the conclusion is not a happy one.
The notion of a woman striving to overcome a sordid past to forge a better life for herself was not new in 1948, as witnessed by earlier plays such as The Second Mrs. Tanqueray, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, and Anna Christie. What sets The Mountains Look Different apart from those works is a mystical quality that permeates this story situated in the Irish hinterlands.
The playwright sets his events on St. John’s Eve, an ancient Irish celebration of midsummer fruitfulness that is celebrated with bonfires, singing, and dancing. The distant blazes seen burning among the mountains will later figure into the story, as do several neighbors who arrive later to sing and make merry. Such cheerful roistering contrasts against the tense face-off between Bairbre and Martin.
Achieving a midsummer madness sort of atmosphere in which anything might happen is critical to sweetening this drama’s overwrought doings. A strategic use of music, lighting, sound effects, and actor choreography, done against an effective setting, could make the drama rise above its limitations. The playwright was said to be a master at conjuring such theatrics and one imagines that his original Gate production of The Mountains Look Different was something to see.
Here at The Mint, unfortunately, the patchy acting is mostly indifferent to the point of appearing under-rehearsed. The hasty physical staging is awkward. The design is not persuasive. And, alas, there is not a hint of theatrical magic that might spark this problematic play into Irish life.
