Hopes naturally skewed high after Irish Repertory Theatre’s engrossing introduction to their season-long, triple-play Brian Friel revival. The first entry, director Doug Hughes’s rendition of the 1980 work Translations, was thoroughly captivating, despite the seeming dryness of its subject matter: Great Britain’s attempt in 1833 to anglicize all of Ireland’s place names, including that of Friel’s favored fictional locus, Ballybeg (“Little Town”) in rural County Donegal.
Aristocrats (1979), the second in the Irish Rep series, is set there some 150 years later, in the mid-1970s, when Anglo-Irish country estates – and the caste system that sustained them – were starting to fall into ruins. The play’s subject matter would seem to be much juicier: Friel conflated elements of Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard to posit a dynasty in deep dive.
The eldest sister, Judith (authoritative Danielle Ryan), has paused her civil-rights activism in order to hold down the crumbling fort while looking after two old men: her nattily dressed, selectively mute uncle and cantankerous, stroke-felled father, a former district judge (Colin Lane handles both cameos expertly). Middle sister Alice (Sarah Street) is a depressive alcoholic, a wan presence who stirs to life only when in her cups. The youngest, twenty-something Claire (Meg Hennessy), is a one-time piano prodigy now affianced to a widower three decades her senior.
[Read Roma Torre’s ★★★☆☆ review here.]
But let us not forget the Andrei figure, here named Casimir and skewed as a neurodivergent prattler, a compulsive name-dropper and fabulist determined to put a glamorous sheen on every aperçu and memory he shares – and he is constantly sharing. (These days, he’d probably aspire to a career as an influencer or politician: definite George Santos vibes). Does this self-described “failed solicitor” actually work “part-time in a food processing factory,” as Alice alleges? All his siblings harbor doubts as to the existence of his vaunted brood back in Hamburg: wife Helga and offspring Herbert, Hans, and Heinrich.
Casimir in fact appears far more obsessed with his natal family’s past glory. Serving as tour guide to visiting Chicago academic Tom Huffnung (Roger Dominic Casey, creditable), he name-drops all the celebs who used to hang out at the manse and recounts a clearly fictitious “party in Vienna” ostensibly attended by a forebear: “Everybody was there: Liszt and George Sand and Turgenev and Mendelssohn and the young Wagner and Berlioz and Delacroix and Verdi— and of course Balzac.”
Of course. The role of Casimir is tremendously juicy, but unfortunately Tom Holcomb overmilks it. Also, why does director Charlotte Moore (IRT’s co-founder) allow him, alone among the cast, to employ a mid-Atlantic accent? It’s difficult to distinguish Casimir’s bid for attention from Holcomb’s. He’s so on, it’s exhausting to watch, and offputting. The play is an ensemble piece, not the Casimir show.
Somewhat overshadowed in the shuffle are two strong actors playing locals: Tim Ruddy as Alice’s spouse Eamon, a parvenu (“My grandmother … worked all her life as a maid in the Hall”), who seems more attached to the old manse and its cachet than are the actual descendants; and man-of-all-trades Willy Diver, who gets an inordinate kick out of winning an imaginary croquet game. The lawn – here depicted as a patch of garish AstroTurf – presumably died off ages ago.
Charlie Corcoran’s slapdash set is a disappointment, even given the strictures of the IRT’s tiny, bifurcated stage. But if there’s fault to be found, it’s shared by Moore and Holcomb. It’s a tricky task, trying to keep Casimir – who knows he’s “peculiar,” has known since childhood – from tipping into caricature and consuming all the oxygen onstage. In this version, Holcomb either claims or is granted way too large a portion of the spotlight, to the detriment of the ensemble’s chemistry and momentum.
Aristocrats opened January 21, 2024, at the Irish Repertory Theatre and runs through March 3. Tickets and information: irishrep.org
