The Irish Rep has gotten into a wonderful habit: Every couple of years, give or take, the theater brings back one of Conor McPherson’s otherworldly dramas. Most recently, the off-Broadway company’s revival of The Seafarer (2018) cast the usually unassuming Matthew Broderick as the literal embodiment of Satan.
This year, director Ciarán O’Reilly and Co. are returning to McPherson’s other Christmas Eve–set play, Dublin Carol, a Dickensian riff centered on a 50-something alcoholic who’s forced to confront the past he thought he’d drowned in a sea of whiskey. As if the situation wasn’t maudlin enough, John (Jeffrey Bean), our Scrooge stand-in, is an undertaker. (The perfectly brown, brown, and more brown funeral home set is by Charlie Corcoran.) The ghost of Christmas future—but not an actual ghost, as in other McPherson plays like Shining City and The Weir—is Mark (Cillian Hegarty), John’s young part-time assistant. And the ghost of Christmas past is John’s daughter, Mary (Sarah Street)—could her name be any more seasonally appropriate?—who comes to tell John, to whom she hasn’t spoken in years, that her mother is dying. And just because it’s Christmas, here’s a little more holiday imagery for you: The (unseen) gent who owns the funeral home is called Noel. He was the one who gave John a job, food, and a place to live when he was at his lowest. You might call him John’s savior.
McPherson offers some striking insights into funerals and death: “It can be sad. But there is a dignity to it,” John tells Mark matter-of-factly, in an attempt to explain their duties. “Because you’re trying to find the dignity. You’re trying to afford people a bit of respect in their last little bit with their family and the people around them. Funeral is for the people left behind. That’s what it’s for. It’s not for the dead person. I don’t think.”
But an alcoholic can be a terribly unsympathetic character around which to build a play. Though John’s worst drinking days are supposedly behind him, thanks to Mary’s arrival and all the hurt and pain that’s dredged up—“You don’t know. I am sorry. I am sorry. I’m sorry about the whole stinking business. I think about it now and I want to puke. I wish I’d never been born,” he yells at her at one point—we know it’s only a matter of time until he goes on another binge. And when he does, it’s all too easy to tune out.
In the final scene, Bean offers a too-stereotypical portrait of a bumbling drunk, complete with extra-loud offstage retching (he’s puking—we get it). If you’ve ever been stone-cold sober and forced to keep company with someone who’s bombed, you know you have very little patience for that person’s antics. To be frank, super-drunk people are exhausting. They’re frustrating. And they wear on you. Whether John will get a chance at redemption remains to be seen—McPherson’s drama ends on a very ambiguous, what some might describe as hopeful, note—but we should want him to get that shot.
Dublin Carol opened Oct. 1, 2019, and runs through Nov. 10 at Irish Rep. Tickets and information: irishrep.org
