Two versions of ‘Outside Mullingar’ (2nd review)

Outside Mullingar concerns two Irish families who live on adjoining farms, where the older generation clings to old ways while their children uncertainly confront middle age. Tony Reilly and his son Anthony own one farm; Aoife Muldoon and her daughter Rosemary inhabit the other. As Dan Rottenberg pointed out in his BSR review, it’s unlikely that farms could be tended without other people to do some work, but the playwright obviously wanted to focus the action on the principals, so only four characters appear, and by the last scene, only two are still alive. (The land itself is a silent fifth character.)

Shanley’s play asks, in effect: What are these two lonely people going to do with the rest of their lives? Their poignant romance echoes Shanley’s 1987 screenplay for Moonstruck, but instead of Italian-Americans in Brooklyn, Shanley’s protagonists here are his own Irish antecedents.

Two Rosemarys

All four are hardened pragmatists, resigned to the idea that happiness is for other people. The elder Tony is stubborn and rough. His son is introspective and inarticulate, a man so afraid of having his heart broken that he has become oblivious to his neighbor’s feelings. He’s so diffident that his father assumes him to be apathetic about family and farm, while Rosemary despairs of his seeming lack of interest in her.

In the recent Pittsburgh production directed by Tracy Brigden, Megan Byrne’s Rosemary appears well past the bloom of youth, and we sense her desperation. As directed in Philadelphia by Mary B. Robinson, on the other hand, Rosemary (Kathleen McNenny) displays in her hairdo, dress, and body language a relatively modern woman, attractive and assertive. In both versions, Rosemary drives the plot — subtly in Byrne’s case, more boldly in McNenny’s.

When Rosemary begs Anthony to notice her, Pittsburgh Anthony (Ron Menzel) acknowledges that he finds her beautiful, in the sense of an inner beauty; whereas the anguished facial expressions of Philadelphia’s Anthony (Tony Lawton) suggest a man who’s aware of Rosemary’s physical beauty but is held in check by his own insecurity.

The parents (Noble Shropshire and Mary Rawson in Pittsburgh, David Howey and Beth Dixon in Philadelphia) are acerbically funny and touching. The Irish dialect was especially beautiful in Philadelphia, thanks to dialect coach Melanie Julian.

Extravagant gesture?

Pittsburgh director Brigden’s town of Killucan, just outside Mullingar, seems otherworldly and atmospheric, much like Brigadoon. Anthony’s home doesn’t even have TV, not since the father broke their set to keep his son from watching soccer.

Robinson’s Philadelphia version is more immediate (the action, after all, occurs between 2008 and 2013). The interiors of the Pittsburgh set are rustic, with the inside walls of the homes made of rough stones; those in the Philadelphia production could be any inexpensive home in Kansas or in Killarney.

One big asset in Philadelphia was the view of stonewalls and the sky before floating flat scenery descended to put the characters indoors.

Last season the Philadelphia Theatre Company and Pittsburgh’s City Theatre collaborated on a co-production of Nina Raine’s Tribes. This year, instead of once again working together on Mullingar, they went their separate ways. There was only a gap of three weeks between the end of Outside Mullingar’s Pittsburgh run and its opening in Philadelphia. That was an artistic blessing for this theatergoer. But considering PTC’s current financial difficulties, was it perhaps financially extravagant?

To read Dan Rottenberg’s review of the Philadelphia Theatre Company production, click here.