'The Night Alive' and 'Outside Mullingar'

That’s what is so striking about the two Irish plays that opened in New York in the past few weeks: Conor McPherson’s The Night Alive and John Patrick Shanley’s Outside Mullingar.

At first glance, you think you’re watching the same play. Both are set in today’s Ireland, both take place in domestic sitting-rooms, and both feature small casts (four and five) of poor, struggling Irish souls. But there the similarities end. Oh, what a difference there is in the way these two writers (one Irish-born, one of Irish descent) view the world.

Bleak and urban
The curtains rises on the cluttered, debris-strewn digs of Tommy, the protagonist in Conor McPherson’s bleak portrait of urban Ireland. Tommy, a down-and-out Dubliner, is struggling for daily survival, eking out a living doing dubious odd jobs. But Tommy (an affecting Ciarán Hinds) has a weakness that gets in his way — he’s a collector of strays. On this particular night, he’s brought home Aimee (Caoilfhionn Dunne), an abused prostitute he’s found on the streets. He offers her a couch in his slovenly sitting room, asking Doc (Michael McElhatton), another stray who bunks with Tommy and who assists him in his various “projects,” if he wouldn’t mind sleeping on the floor. Tommy himself is somewhat of a poacher — he rents his rooms from his cranky old uncle Maurice (a crusty Jim Norton) who lives on the second floor. Later, a fifth character — the mysterious Kenneth (a scary Brian Gleeson) — will enter and threaten this delicate domestic balance.

McPherson’s assortment of lost souls calls to mind the world of Gorky’s Lower Depths or O’Neill’s Iceman Cometh. While there are a few fleeting moments of relief in their dreary lives, the prospect of shelter from life’s storms — including random acts of violence — is bleak. So, too, is any prognosis of order or sustainable happiness. What keeps them going is their togetherness and small acts of kindness. That may be saying a lot, but it doesn’t always make for satisfying theater.

Hopeful and rural

Outside Mullingar, in contrast, fairly sparkles with life and hope, though three deaths occur during the play, two onstage and one off (no spoiler alert required — we’re told this at the top).

The scene, again, is a tiny sitting room, this time in a remote village in the poor, rural Irish Midlands. As in The Night Alive, two old neighbors sit at the kitchen table, talking gloom and doom — an element embedded in the Irish DNA apparently, along with the rain that keeps pouring down throughout the play. Tony Reilly (a charming Peter Maloney) is dissatisfied with life (another traditional Irish pastime). “I hope you never know what it means to be old,” he complains to his neighbor Aoife (a stoic Dearbhla Molloy), who also happens to be an octogenarian and has just buried her husband that morning. Tony announces that he’s going to sell his farm (home to the Reillys for 120 years) to his nephew in America, rather than leave it to his son Anthony, who is a keen disappointment to him.

The play centers on Anthony (a tender Brían O’Byrne) and Rosemary, Aoife’s daughter (a formidable Debra Messing), heirs to their respective family farms. A disputed strip of land between them threatens to keep their family feud alive. Tony sold the strip to Rosemary’s father years ago (to buy an engagement ring for his wife), and Rosemary in turn refuses to sell back. Why should she?, she reasons, since 30 years ago (when she was 6 and Anthony was 13), Anthony allegedly pushed her down on the very spot.

How will Anthony and Rosemary live side by side, once they inherit their respective farms? You see it coming, don’t you? It’s the classical setup for an adversarial romance, a standoff of the sexes straight out of Chekhov’s Proposal.

Anthony, according to his father, is just plain “strange.” A shy, reclusive loner, he eschews the company of others and prefers “the voices” he hears while he’s working in his beloved fields. “Does it ever seem to you that this country is too small?” he complains. As for women, he claims his heart was broken long ago by one Fiona and uses this excuse to keep safe in his shell.

But the wisecracking, cigarette-smoking, finger-pointing Rosemary is a force to be reckoned with. She’s a protofeminist who stands her ground, outspoken in her views (she refers to the Bible as “the book of awful stories”). She silences the garrulous Aoifa and bullies Tony into leaving the land to Anthony. Then she confronts Anthony and challenges him to express his hidden feelings for her.

Their improbable “wooing” scenes provide the irresistible heart of the play. Anthony: “People don’t appeal to me." Rosemary: “That’s normal.” Or: Anthony: “I don’t like to fight.” Rosemary: “Who does?” Anthony: “Half of Ireland.” And so on.

Tales of the past — rings given, promises made, grudges held, property disputed, loves lost — this is the fabric of Irish storytelling. Playwright Shanley has, in a sense, woven a tale of rural Ireland, but rather than people it with caricatures, he’s created feisty, full-blooded eccentrics who are flawed, who do foolish things, and yet are deeply, lovably human. Moreover, he’s enriched his story with that special contradictory brand of Irish humor — self-deprecating, fatalistic, absurdist, and at the same time sentimental.

Outside Mullingar evokes the kind of laughter-through-tears that Chekhov’s plays and story do. People live, love, suffer, die — and we laugh at their foolishness. In that sense, Shanley joins the tradition of Chekhovian Irish playwrights like Brian Friel who tap into the stoic, romantic side of the Irish character, while Conor McPherson taps into the darker Irish side, along with playwright Martin McDonagh.

Meanwhile, whether laced with the hilarious, the harrowing, the hopeful, or the heartbreaking, it’s the charm of the Irish that’s warming our audiences this cold winter.