According to the Irish Repertory Theatre program for The Butcher Boy, composer-lyricist-bookwriter Asher Muldoon is a “rising senior at Princeton University,” and here he is already (and all ready) with a production at a major off-Broadway house. Mighty impressive.
In a program note the young man – apparently 23 now, although this musical has long been in the work – reports, “I first encountered and fell in love with Pat McCabe’s The Butcher Boy as a junior in high school. Immediately, I was struck by the natural musicality of Francie’s voice.”
First off, let a reviewer state that throughout The Butcher Boy Muldoon evidences talent for a rewarding career in musicals. Next, allow a reviewer to observe about the musical at hand that it’s not a musical comedy but a musical tragedy, and that raises resistance.
It can also be said without too much fear of contradiction that McCabe’s protagonist, Francie Brady (Nicholas Barasch), is a lad brought up not far from Dublin and so is indubitably Irish. As such, he’s given to speaking musically. So many of the Ireland population do.
In other words, on the surface, Francie is no more nor less musical than, say, James Joyce’s Leo Bloom or, for that matter, Samuel Beckett’s Vladimir or Estragon. Therefore, Francie must have additional qualities that call for him to break into song consistently – as is true of the characters supporting him.
This raises the obvious question: Who is this Francie, whom McCabe introduced in his 1992 work? On first sighting – with best friend Joe Purcell (Christian Strange) and chanting about the fine life he leads and expects to keep leading – he appears to be a typical mischievous teen. He indulges in the odd prank. He’ll tease nerdy local scholar, Philip Nugent (Daniel Marconi) and even harass Philip’s mother, Mrs. Nugent (Michele Ragusa).
Unfortunately. Francie isn’t a typical mischievous teen and less so when Joe, Philip, and he are no longer teenagers. Raised by abusive, alcoholic Da (Scott Stangland) and timid, often sickly Ma (Andrea Lynn Green), and molded by 50s and 60s television series – notably a Rod Serling Twilight Zone episode about human pigs ruling the earth – Francie increasingly retreats into psychosis.
Though eventually losing both parents and alienating Joe, who’s now more a friend to Philip, Francie ends Muldoon’s first act in troubled straits, which in other circumstances might foreshadow a redemptive second act.
But no. Despite romantic feelings towards three attractive women named Mary (Kerry Cone tripling), his behavior – often encouraged by the recurring pig people (Teddy Trice, Carey Rebecca Brown, Polly McKie, David Baida) – only worsens, only becomes more violent. Eventually, Francie commits a blackout action that may be the most hideous in any musical ever mounted.
One question asked in the last few decades is whether it’s possible to build a musical about a heinous protagonist. Perhaps since Sweeney Todd, the answer is yes. To bring it off, however, it takes creators more experienced than Muldoon is at the moment.
My guess is that The Butcher Boy – you may have already realized that the title has more than the obvious implication – is so far out there that some observers will cheer its ominous chutzpah. Ultimately though, Muldoon’s musical is just ugly. And who wants a musical to be, in the final analysis, downright repellent?
This, despite many redeeming qualities, foremost the cast, directed by Ciarán O’Reilly and choreographed by Barry McNabb. The tall, ginger haired Barasch unrestrainedly throws himself musically into the forbidding role. As Pa, Strange is convincingly hateful and delivers the score’s best number, “Those Were the Days.” (It’s not a reprise of the Mary Hopkins chart-topper.) Marconi makes a nimble song-and-dance man of Philip. At the piano, David Hancock Turner conducts the lively Slaughterhouse Five, the band title evidently referring to the script’s off-putting displays.
Charlie Corcoran’s main set furnishing is a large tv screen on which Dan Scully projects all sort of images enhancing Muldoon’s 50s-60s sci-fi underpinnings. Stanley Alan Sherman designed the constantly used pig masks.
Were I to delve deeper into The Butcher Boy, I might wonder if there is a more personal reason for young Muldoon’s urge to adapt the McCabe novel. Headlines over the past years have been crowded with young men 18 or so afflicted with defective mental states – young men who blithely purchase AR-15 rifles and then wreak havoc with them. Francie, in The Butcher Boy, is another one of them.
The Butcher Boy opened August 1, 2022, at the Irish Repertory Theatre and runs through September 11. Tickets and information: irishrep.org
