More than a few well-born writers have felt compelled to extol the dignity of the less fortunate. Then there’s John Millington Synge, whose unidealized portraits of the rural Irish poor and working class were as provocative in their time as they remain evocative. His most famous work, The Playboy of the Western World, was greeted at its 1907 Dublin premiere with riots.
For Two By Synge, Irish Repertory Theatre artistic director Charlotte Moore has paired a couple of earlier plays—both inspired, as the company’s site points out, by the playwright’s time living among peasants at the suggestion of his most renowned champion, one William Butler Yeats. (He did so on the Aran Islands, which would later become a fertile setting for Martin McDonagh’s work.)The Tinker’s Wedding follows the interaction between a corrupt Catholic priest and wily country folk as two of the latter seek to be married; in In the Shadow of the Glen, a woman hosts two male guests at her husband’s wake before getting a rude shock.
Clocking in at just 75 minutes combined, without an intermission, the plays are best appreciated as character studies, in which storytelling and humor take precedence over social commentary. Moore, wisely, manages them as such, emphasizing the lyrical and, especially, comic qualities of Synge’s portraits. (In his preface to Tinker’s Wedding, Synge noted that the Irish, “from the tinkers to the clergy, have still a life, and view of life, that are rich and genial and humorous,” and that he didn’t think they would “mind being laughed at without malice, as the people in every country have been laughed out without malice.”)
The supple five-person company sets the mood with a buoyant performance of a traditional folk song, “Marie’s Wedding”; traditional Irish and Gaelic ballads will be delivered later, along with one original tune by cast member Sean Gormley and another by Moore, set to words Synge included in Tinker’s Wedding. David Toser’s costumes bring a rush of earthy color suited to this play, the first one performed, while Nathanael Brown and Kimberly S. O’Loughlin’s sound design draws us further into the nautral world with assorted animal noises—dogs barking, birds tweeting—and the gentle roar of a crackling fire.
John Keating, Jo Kinsella, and Terry Donnelly are decidedly louder as, respectively, tinker Michael Byrne, his ambitious sweetheart, and his debauched mother, whose fondness for the bottle disrupts the young couple’s marriage plans. In fact, there should be limited need for hearing aids in Irish Rep’s intimate W. Scott McLucas Studio Theatre during this run, given the decibel level sustained as these characters—along with a pompous priest, drolly played by Sean Gormley—twist and shout. Kinsella’s bellowing is particularly fulsome, and funny, as we’re repeatedly reminded that this banshee is known as the fairest maiden in her village.
Kinsella brings it down a notch but stays sharp playing In the Shadow of the Glen‘s Nora Burke, introduced as a not-so-grieving widow. Keating returns as a tramp who wanders into Nora’s home—a most modest but cozy place, as furnished by set designer Daniel Geggatt—during a storm, while she is holding a half-hearted wake. They’re joined by another man, a strapping young neighbor played with amusing earnestness by Ciaran Bowling, as thunder continues to crash ominously outside their refuge, but what transpires proves more farcical than fearsome.
If there’s little here likely to evoke either indignation or deep reflection in a contemporary audience, Moore’s tribute to Synge is a charming portrait of the artist as a young man—one that, beyond the laughs on tap, should encourage the uninitiated to dig deeper.
Two by Synge opened April 24, 2022, at the Irish Repertory Theatre and runs through May 22. Tickets and information: irishrep.org
