Greetings, all! It's Alan Patrick Kenny again, on a crusade to see the best NY theatre, and still living to tell you about it. :)

On Tuesday and Wednesday, I got to take in my first Broadway shows in over a year, and it's ironic how two small cast hit plays, one a revival and one spankin' new, could use such a similar formula: take a dilapidated one room set with a staircase, some furniture (a few chairs and one couch sitting profile stage left), an upstage center alcove, add some vitrolic characters and alcohol, and PRESTO: draaama!

It's the 40th anniversery of Harold Pinter's classic The Homecoming, and it's been given an exceptionally well-cast, scintillating revival directed by Daniel Sullivan. Now, admittedly, this is my first stage experience with a Pinter play, but woah! This one did a number on my head, though I'm not sure it was quite in the way the author wanted.

It was stunning to see an incredibly well-rounded ensemble attack Pinter's classic spare, pause-ridden dialogue with remarkable control. Raul Esparza, who up until his performance in Company was known as a ball of fire-breathing physical energy on stage, turns in a near-motionless, yet still highly combustible performance.

His main partner in crime is Eve Best, an award-winning London actress who made her Broadway debut last year opposite Kevin Spacey in A Moon for the Misbegotten (and stole the spotlight entirely from him in that production), matches Esparza in the almost mythical role of Ruth, Esparza's brother in law who is accused of being a tart and eventually, shockingly, it seems that she could in fact be one.

The rest of the cast aquits more than admirably, and my ambivelence about the evening's proceedings lie more with the piece itself and the story's plotting. For those of you don't know the play, I won't spoil the details, as raptly watching the actors for a clue about what might happen next is one of the chief pleasures of the evening. However, although I'm sure The Homecoming shocked audiences 40 years ago in it's debut, I found this production without an overriding, ending reason or point to why the characters make the decisions that they do. The particular situation doesn't shock current audiences to the same degree as it's original observers, and I left the theatre more puzzled than anything else, wondering how this story could have flown 40 years ago. The answer, probably, is that it didn't.

THE SEAFARER
by Conor McPherson
directed by the playwright
featuring Ciaran Hinds and David Morse
Booth Theatre

The next day, less than 12 hours later, I took in a matinee of the highly recommended transfer production from the National Theatre in London, Conor McPherson's The Seafarer. As I walked in the theatre, I experienced a bit of deja vu, as it seemed that I was looking at the same set that I saw in the theatre at the evening before!

But, aided by the cadence of not-too-thick Irish accents and a much more physical, naturalistic performance style by the cast, I was launched into a frigid, drunk, Irish Christmas Eve unlike any other. I say that because the elderly yet irrepressable and newly-blind Richard (an incredibly appealing Jim Norton) and brother Sharky (David Morse, that bad guy from Disturbia who seems to be in everything), and friends end up playing poker with none other than the Devil in disguise (Ciaran Hinds, known from playing Caesar in HBO's Rome).

McPherson mercifully avoids all of the Christmas cliches that can plague stories about redemption over the holidays, and instead focuses first and formost on creating real and entertainingly hapless characters (Ivan Curry, playing a friend who always shows up and never seems to leave, has lost his glasses and drunkenly feels his way around throughout the play), and secondly focusing intensely on the Faustian aspects of his story.

25 years prior, after committing a severe crime, Sharky got off scott free after beating the Devil at cards, and he has come around to collect Sharky's soul. Mr. Hinds and Mr. Morse's private scenes are quite effective, particularly a gorgeous Act II speech by the Devil on what Hell is like.

However, most of the play is much lighter in tone, due to the charming obliviousness of the rest of the characters. And, perhaps most surprisingly of all, a feeling of old-fashioned uplift pervades the air, and because it doesn't push too hard, feels justified and just right.