Outside Mullingar
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Cititour.com Review
John Patrick Shanley characters go to extremes, whether they’re on a quest to find love or desperate to avoid it at all costs. Audiences who remember the bickering couples he depicted in his Oscar-winning screenplay for Moonstruck and his breakthrough play Danny and the Deep Blue Sea will be able to sense the arc that awaits Rosemary and Anthony in his new Broadway play, Outside Mullingar.
Each of these two middle-aged loners lives with an elderly parent on neighboring farms in Ireland. Shanley places them in a charming contemporary romance with elements of fable, probing such themes as the fear of love and the fear that one is unlovable. But the playwright seems to have a fear of intimacy with his lead characters. Too often, Shanley undercuts honest emotional discourse by tossing in an irreverent line or silly joke that jars rather than complements a scene.
Debra Messing (TV’s Will & Grace) and Brían F. O’Byrne (a Tony winner for Shanley’s Doubt) play the boisterous Rosemary—think Lucy van Pelt all grown up—and the timid Anthony. It’s hard to fathom why Rosemary would have turned down other suitors to wait decades for a sad-sack like Anthony to notice her (maybe he’s just not that into you, Rosemary). Even if you accept the premise, Shanley’s banter as they come together aims for quirky and sweet, but lands between silly and sentimental.
He doesn’t do that in the most affecting scene, however. That occurs halfway through the play, when Anthony’s father, Tony (Peter Maloney, giving a tour de force performance), recalls the moment he went from sleepwalking through life to fully participating in it, and hopes his son will make the same discovery. Maloney’s gentle delivery brings out the vigor of Shanley’s words. Audience members sobbed audibly throughout Tony’s heartbreakingly beautiful monologue, which is never mawkish.
If only other moments were as potent. While Shanley and director Doug Hughes let Tony’s deathbed scene unfold gradually, the rest of the play is often marked by swift pacing and forceful delivery. Messing makes a perfectly respectful Broadway debut, but she’s overshadowed by the marvelously soulful O’Byrne, who overcomes the play’s limitations to fully inhabit Anthony’s self-inflicted solitude. But even the efforts of O’Byrne and Maloney can’t elevate Outside Mullingar to more than the mishmash it is.
By Diane Snyder
Visit the Site
http://outsidemullingarbroadway.com
Cast
Brían F. O'Byrne, Debra Messing, Peter Maloney, Dearbhla Molloy
Open/Close Dates
Opening 1/3/2014
Closing 3/16/2014
Box Office
212-239-6200
Theatre Info
Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
261 West 47th Street
New York, NY 10036
Map
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