Review: ‘The Seafarer’ at the Geffen Playhouse

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When the characters in Irish playwright Conor McPherson’s plays (“The Weir,” “Shining City”) get together, talking and drinking ensue with such titanic force that it’s almost as if the booze were fueling their gab. But in “The Seafarer,” which opened Wednesday at the Geffen Playhouse, the cast of garrulous drunkards seems out to break the Guinness World Record for inebriated words uttered in a single drama.

Ah, but it’s Christmas Eve, the wobbly crew would be sure to remind us. A little indulgence is in order. Or as Richard (John Mahoney), who has recently lost his sight after an unfortunate collision with a dumpster, points out to “Sharky” (Andrew Connolly), his newly abstemious younger brother with the troubled past, “It’s called being festive.”

Sorry to be a killjoy amid so much celebratory whiskey, but the party takes an awfully long time to get going in Randall Arney’s unsettled production. In fact, the whole first act seems like a jumpy prelude in which the cast members are trying on accents and acting approaches. The second act at least has an everything-on-the-line poker game presided over by the devil, some darkly exquisite writing on the nature of hell and an ending that detonates with a well-deployed surprise. But this updated version of the Faust myth, set in a seedy part of North Dublin, needs a subtler staging to discern its secret depths.

Tom Irwin (a Steppenwolf Theatre Company actor currently on the cable show “Saving Grace”) assumes the diabolical role of Mr. Lockhart, a sharp-dressed executive type who arrives for a Christmas Eve card game in company with Nicky (Matt Roth), Richard’s friend and the sweet but unimpressive guy now involved with Sharky’s ex. Although Mr. Lockhart appears to be a stranger, he has had a fateful encounter more than 20 years ago with Sharky and also seems to know a thing or two about Ivan (Paul Vincent O’Connor), a hapless good-natured drunk who can never remember where he left the car after yet another night of marathon imbibing.

In McPherson’s world, the natural and the supernatural are forever bound up with each other. So it’s perfectly normal for a character to show up in this fetid sty of a house — creepily brought to life by scenic designer Takeshi Kata with pathetic holiday touches — and disclose that he’s “the snake in the garden,” who has come to claim Sharky’s soul.

The back story is that Sharky, facing jail time for a barroom brawl that ended tragically, made a bad bargain for his freedom with the fiendish Lockhart. But for all the human characters in “The Seafarer,” the present is about keeping at bay a history of crimes, misdemeanors and other moral regrets. Intoxication for these men is an existential crutch, a self-medicating form of amnesia.

When “The Seafarer” hit Broadway in 2007, the production was hailed for its magnificent ensemble, headed by Jim Norton, who won a Tony for his performance in the role now being chomped on by Mahoney. The play on first impression can seem overly familiar — not just the yuletide setting and Sharky’s old debt with the devil, but also the gallows Gaelic humor (a staple of McPherson’s contemporary Martin McDonagh) and the no-holds-barred boozing.

Yet there’s something sinisterly subterranean going on under the play’s clichéd surface. I left the Booth Theatre in New York thinking I had seen an amazing set of actors in a so-so dramatic work, and found myself up all night in my hotel room, staring at the ceiling and contemplating McPherson’s real preoccupation — guilt and the possibility of redemptive grace.

Thanks to the haunted aura of Connolly, who portrays Sharky as though he were shrouded in a sickening awareness of inexpiable remorse, this dimension of “The Seafarer” peers through the Geffen production. We see just how lost he is, the way his sins of omission and commission weigh on him. We’re even given a glimpse at the violence rumbling under the self-pity.

But the relationship between the brothers is only sketched. Mahoney is playing someone who has lost his vision, which perhaps explains his penchant for pitching his lines into a middle-distance, but for much of his performance he seems more interested in calculating the effects of his comic barbs than in anchoring himself to his character.

The ensemble becomes more ensemble-like as Christmas Eve blurs into Christmas morn. O’Connor and Roth offer strong group support, and Irwin manages the voluptuous verbiage of his character’s dark arias well, but overall, the talented actors haven’t yet gelled into a genuine company.

The star of “The Seafarer” should be the seamless collective, but like the journey of forgiveness in McPherson’s play, that requires more patience and time.

-- Charles McNulty

‘The Seafarer,’ Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood. 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays, 4 and 8:30 p.m. Saturdays, 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays. Ends May 24. $45 to $79. (310) 208-5454. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.