The Irish Play Reviews

The New York Times - June 27, 2007
THEATER REVIEW | 'THE IRISH PLAY'
Two Guys Drunk on Ireland, and the Party’s Just Begun
By RACHEL SALTZ
Correction Appended

“The general atmosphere reeks of talk,” a character in “The Irish Play” says, speaking of the Dublin apartment shared by a would-be playwright and a would-be terrorist who rant and argue about race memory, blood, poetry, ambition, middle-class platitudes and what it means to be Irish.

It is 1975. Liam, the not-quite terrorist, is the kind of angry, word-churning Irishman who inflames the imagination of the playwright, Cian, a Yank from Boston. Drunk on the soulful Irishness of Yeats, O’Casey and Joyce, Cian soaks up Liam’s banter and outbursts, typing them straight into his own “Irish Play.”

Liam is drunk on Irishness, too, but his is the self-lacerating kind, handed down by what he calls “the Irish Free State Ministry of Pain, Suffering and Catholicism.” Together the two try on and discard attitudes and personas while the 20-something insults fly: “Poser!” “Hypocrite!”

This is the promising set-up of Tim McGillicuddy’s “Irish Play,” a production of the Hamm & Clov Stage Company that has been showing to enthusiastic audiences at the Irish Arts Center. But as the plot swings into action — Cian’s girlfriend is pregnant, and he wants to take her away to London; Liam, an orphan, finds out that he’s not Irish by blood, compromising his plans to go to Belfast to foment revolution with his girlfriend — the play becomes more conventional, its characters’ choices and motives less organic.

Directed by Theodore Mann, “The Irish Play” is billed as a romantic comedy. It is. The sparks, though, come not from the two couples but from the friendship between the roommates, and if it’s a triangle of desire, the third point is Ireland.

Zachary Spicer’s Cian is an impassioned if callow idealist. The excellent Jonathan P. Judge-Russo makes Liam his perfect foil: a charmer and a lout, and the play’s charismatic driving force.

The girlfriends (Alicia M. Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Stephensen) are not as vividly imagined, and the two couples seem notional. As a result, the about-faces and life-changing decisions Cian and Liam make in the second act don’t ring true.

This is comedy, so Mr. McGillicuddy, a first-time playwright, provides a happy ending. But it’s hard to imagine the Cian and Liam of Act I being happy with how their creator has arranged their fates in Act II.

“The Irish Play” is in an open-ended run at the Irish Arts Center, 553 West 51st Street, Clinton; (914) 963-6222, www.hammandclov.org.

Correction: June 29, 2007
Schedule information on Wednesday with a theater review of “The Irish Play,” at the Irish Arts Center on West 51st Street in Manhattan, misidentified the Web site that gives complete information and offers online ticket purchases. It is hammandclov.org, not irishartscenter.org.

 

 

 

 

 

North Salem builder's play makes it to Broadway

By ERNIE GARCIA
THE JOURNAL NEWS

(Original publication: July 10, 2007)
A North Salem building contractor and aspiring playwright saw his work staged on Broadway last night.

Tim McGillicuddy, 45, wrote "The Irish Play" more than a decade ago, but economic and family demands forced him to put down his pen. When McGillicuddy's wife showed the play to the Yonkers-based Hamm & Clov Stage Company, the group developed it for the stage.

The play then took a peculiar road, premiering at Rory Dolan's Restaurant and Bar in Yonkers before having a five-week run at the Irish Arts Center in Manhattan. Last night the group did a free show for the Circle in the Square School at the Circle in the Square Theatre.

" It turns out it's a good play," McGillicuddy said yesterday, noting that writing a play is not so different from his job building houses. "You've got to build something that stands up and that's good."

" The Irish Play" is a romantic comedy based in the Dublin of 1975 involving characters who are Irish, British and American.

The play drew good reviews. A critic for The Irish Echo described the play as "charming, insightful," while an Irish Voice critic wrote that the play was a "pleasingly jaundiced cultural identity caper."

The Westchester Arts Council helped get "The Irish Play" produced through a $2,000 grant. Holly Villaire, Hamm & Clov's producing artistic director, said the company has produced seven original plays in the local Irish American community since 2001.

" I was delighted by the success, but I wasn't surprised, because the play is terrific," she said, noting that the play was directed by Tony Award winner Theodore Mann, the Circle in the Square's artistic director.

McGillicuddy wrote eight plays before setting the craft aside to raise a family. "The Irish Play" was based on people he knew combined with conflict in Northern Ireland in the early 1990s.

Before "The Irish Play," the only other McGillicuddy work to be produced was a children's play about 24 years ago.

He's now in discussions with theaters and stage companies about performing "The Irish Play" in other places. He has also turned his attention to his other unstaged plays.

" It's my new pastime," McGillicuddy said. "I'm already working on revising the next one."