Coming late—January 2, 2020—to Scene Theatre's and Robert McNamara’s seamlessly lyrical production of TheDead, an award-winning musical by composer Shaun Davey with book by Richard Nelson based on James Joyce’s short story by the same title, the Dresser is grateful to have experienced this wistfully lively show with musical direction by Greg Watkins. Set at Christmas and during a Christmas party at that, it is the perfect winter holiday story. Everyone sings at this party, even the housemaid and the hired man who helps serve the dinner.
Everything
about this production staged at the Atlas Performing Arts Center in Washington,
DC pleased. Carl Gudenius’ set showing the audience three areas of a
house—entrance hallway, grand living room with piano and window with an alcove
bench, and dining room with a large formal table and chairs—included lots of eye-catching
details like a handsome area rug in the living room. The costumes by Alisa Mandel offered realism and flair, particularly in the lovely lace worked into
many of the women’s blouses and, of course, the Irish are known for their
handmade lace.
What
carried the show was the fluid music and dance performed by an able cast of
thirteen.
The story
at the heart of this musical involves a man named Gabriel Conroy, played by
Louis LaVoie, who serves as the narrator, filling in what is not imparted by
the musical numbers. He is very much in love with his wife Gretta, played by Danielle
Davy, whom his doting and elderly spinster aunts—Aunt Julia Morkan (Andrea
Hatfield) and Aunt Kate Morkan (Rosemary Regan) tend to discount, calling
Gretta country cute. Nearly everyone
at the party initiates a song. Gabriel and Gretta sing “Adieu to Ballyshannon,”
a lilting tune in waltz tempo that the partygoers all love even though the
couple has sung the same song in other years. Later, Gretta moved by Bartell D’Arcy
(Leo Delgado), the special guest who is an opera singer, says she will sing a song
that she is reminded of and which, she tells her husband who offers to help her
sing it, he has never heard before. She strikes a far away look of radiance and
sings in a mesmerizing delicate voice about a lost love of hers by the name of
Michael Furey. Initially, Gabriel thinks she is singing about him, but later to
his abject disappointment discovers not so. He is sadly angry that she has
never told him about this man whom she then reveals died at the age of 17
hopelessly in love with her.
There is
lots of fun choreography including a heel-clicking dance to the tune of "Three Jolly Pigeons" by a drunken young man
named Freddy Malins (John Gerard Healy).
A subplot
is the failed lives of the elderly aunts who live their whole lives through
performing and teaching music. At the end of the party, Aunt Julia, dying, is
visited by a younger apparition of herself, played by the intriguing looking Antonia
Romm, who might have the face of medieval angel.
In Rocky
Delaplaine’s poem “Watching Romeo and Juliet,” the narrator is reminded of a
past romance with a man who is still the handsomest
man she knows. Unlike Michael Furey, the handsome man of Delaplaine’s poem
is still out there driving nails and building houses but the poet has chosen
another man, her current husband, to build a family with. In James Joyce’s
story, the reader never gets to know if Greta would have married Michael had he
lived. Therefore, The Dead is a
bittersweet story.
WATCHING
ROMEO AND JULIET
Tall oaks
frame a make-shift stage.
Families gather
at River Bend Park
on a warm
August night to picnic
and see
their kids in a Shakespeare play.
A
half-moon rises over the Potomac.
The platform—twelve
sheets of plywood
propped on
two-by-fours. Staring
at this
pared-down set, I think of a man
I left
long ago, a carpenter and homebuilder
by trade. Why
did I leave, exactly?
At 60 he’s
the handsomest man I know,
can still
drive a nail through without
hitting
the wood. The night I left him
he howled
as though his leg were caught
in a steel
trap. Never, I vowed, never again.
And who is
this man next to me now,
our
daughter edging up a few rows to sit
with
friends? When the young lovers kiss
I envy
their passion, but not their impatience.
At intermission
the director reminds us,
If they marry, it’s a comedy, if
they die,
it’s a tragedy. On the drive home,
our thirteen-year-old
wonders out loud,
It’s both, isn’t it? Yes, I say, it’s both.
by Joanne
Rocky Delaplaine
from The Local World
Next play
by Scena is Ajax by Sophocles and
directed by Robert McNamara from March 20 to April 19, 2020.
Photo
credit: Jae Yi Photography
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