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Shining City glows at Fountain
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Morlan Higgins and William Denis Hurley (L-R) in "Shining City"
Things will go bump in the night during a well executed production of a Conor McPherson play whether the underworld creatures are present or suggested.
“Shining City” (2004) is a creepfest; more so than “The Seafarer” and even more so than “The Weir” which had a bunch of blarney filled pub mates spinning ghost stories. The four character “Shining City” has an addled businessman confessing that he has been driven from his house by the ghost of his recently killed wife. The therapist, a former priest, doesn’t believe in the afterlife, but he’ll try to help his client anyway.
Of course with a play this rich and layered, with so much to say about the ways people behave in the face of isolation, it would be a capital offense to overspook matters. Also, in assembling the play’s L.A. premiere at the Fountain Theatre, director Stephen Sachs has the great good fortune to reunite Morlan Higgins and William Dennis Hurley who spun such magic for the Fountain in Athol Fugard’s “Exits and Entrances.”
There is, make no mistake, a moment of genuine terror in this production which Sachs and lighting designer Ken Booth bring off with a chilling brio. But whether you buy into “Shining City” as a ghost story first or a human contact tale (the playwright has said it’s the former), there’s no disputing the value of two skilled players working their complicated characters. With Higgins and Hurley playing so deftly off each other, the spooks don’t stand a chance.
Or maybe they do. Higgins’s John, paunchy and stammering, drops onto shrink Ian’s couch with an addled soul and with more bad deeds and thoughts _ he thinks _ to confess than could be purged in five sessions. There’s the ghost of his wife Mary who stares at John and has driven him, scared and sleepless, away from work and to lodge at a nearby B&B. Also on John’s mind is childlessness, a near affair conducted before Mary’s death and a visit to a brothel and the repercussions.
Higgins pours out the whole pail full mostly in an extended monolog that is vintage McPherson. When the territory gets rough, Ian offers his patient the opportunity to pick it up at another session. “No, I’ll…” insists John, “I’ll finish what I came to say today.” That’s a McPherson character for you: they don’t tend to leave tales untold.
It’s a bravura monolog not so much for its emotional highs and lows, but for the fact that even John doesn’t necessarily know where his tale his leading. His rambling realizations are key to the play _ and to Ian who is a very good listener. Higgins, who is employing no fussy actor-ly technique, offers up a guilt ridden man in pain. In the final scene when he arrives unannounced to bid Ian goodbye, his therapist says “You’ve done all the work. “
Ian, meanwhile, takes John’s tales more to heart than his patient will ever realize. Our shrink is a lapsed Catholic priest who left the church and later abandons Neasa (Kerrie Blaisdell) the mother of his newborn daughter. Neasa comes to Ian’s office, trying to entice him to return and unleashes a torrent of angry guilt: “I don’t want…I can’t! I can’t! I can’t!” It’s an ugly scene to witness; Blaisdell’s heartbroken dignity serving as flashpoint to Hurley’s self loathing fury. Plus she’s got a confession of her own to impart.
Our man, as I’ve said, is probably an excellent therapist. Watch Hurley’s face during his sessions with Higgins. The mask doesn’t crack, but there are periodic instances where a viewer can detect how much the shrink _ in the face of a story about isolation _needs to heal himself. Driving this home is a scene that has Ian bringing home a male prostitute (Benjamin Keepers, quietly excellent).
Set designer Shaun L. Motley has Ian’s third floor Dublin walk up looking like, appropriately, a converted cathedral. The recently unpacked boxes are rarely out of sight; the tissue box looks understocked. The corridor leading out the front doorway to the stairway below echoes distantly. There is always, despite that this is a doctor/patient play, the hint that something eerie could happen.
When it does, you’ll likely jump. Before that, Sachs, his cast and the marvelous Conor McPherson may make you cry.
Plays 8 p.m. Thu.-Sat., 2 p.m. Sun; through Dec. 19 at 5060 Fountain Ave., L.A. $18-$28. (323) 663-1525, www.FountainTheatre.com.
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