Theatre Review: Shining City
By Justin Sondak in Arts & Entertainment on Jan 24, 2008 9:24PM
Love fades. Existence kills our dreams. It’s all shite in the end anyway.
Conor McPherson’s characters pull few punches in Shining City, the young Irish master’s latest offering, where two generations come to terms with the past in a “new” Ireland. Provinciality is out, WiFi is in, as national and personal identity face a low-grade crisis. To his credit, McPherson addresses these issues with subtlety and humor in a script that shows growth from The Weir, his eerily fascinating yet rudderless late '90s hit show.
Ian and John are confronting ghosts. After a fatal accident claims his wife, John faces survivor’s guilt and insomnia in sessions with Ian, a priest turned therapist dealing with his own disintegrating relationship. Their parallel journeys are clear but not obvious in a script where awkward moments and pregnant pauses are almost as revealing as its carefully crafted monologues.
The best of these monologues — John’s extended story of extramarital temptation and mid-life distractions — is delivered so well by a boisterous John Judd, we wish we’d seen more of him. Jay Whittaker finds the lost little boy in Ian, a shaky therapist but sympathetic listener, in a pleasantly understated performance and plays well off of girlfriend Neasa, effectively depicted by Nicole Wiesner. Our only gripe is that the production scale is entirely too large—the intimate human drama seems better suited to a smaller, off-Loop space than the 800+ seat Albert Theatre.
The playwright cites David Mamet’s fierce, crackling dialogue as inspiration, but John’s depth and grounded philosophy recall the old timers in August Wilson’s Radio Golf, produced on this same stage last year. Here, as in Wilson’s final opus, nostalgia and reality awkwardly collide and the aging heroes long for a do over. McPherson has discussed openly how his rehab from an alcoholism that nearly killed him informed this story. His own struggles make the shocker of an ending more fearsome; these memories will never completely fade.
Shining City is at the Goodman Theatre through February 24. Tickets are $20-$70.
Photo by Peter Wynn Thompson