Hailed by Terry Teachout of The Wall Street Journal as "the greatest playwright of our time,"
The Irish Rep is proud announce its extension of Aristocrats by Brian Friel, to March 29, 2009.
Aristocrats. One of the most distinctive voices in contemporary Irish theater, master storyteller Brian Friel is at the top of his form with this touching story of a once powerful and aristocratic family in its days of decline. In the author's most Chekovian play, he examines the Ballybeg "Big House" both in its remembered heyday and in the era of a heartbreaking social change. The clan gathers for the joys of a wedding but their pasts intrude and truths are revealed in this beautifully tender play by the Tony Award-winning author.
See what The Times has to say...
An Irish Home Littered With Corpses, Living and Dead
By WILBORN HAMPTON
January 28, 2009
THEATER REVIEW | 'ARISTOCRATS'
The O’Donnell family is on its last legs. In four generations its sons have gone from a High Court justice to a sausage-factory worker, and in Brian Friel’s elegiac play “Aristocrats,” which is being given A FIRST-RATE REVIVAL by the Irish Repertory Theater, what begins as a wedding celebration ends up as a wake.
The clan has gathered in the 1970s at its ancestral home, Ballybeg Hall, for the impending nuptials of the youngest daughter, Claire, whose dream of being a concert pianist was stifled by the domineering father. She now spends her days playing Chopin, leaving to her sister Judith — forced by the father to place her illegitimate child in an orphanage — the burden of caring for the bedridden and demented old man, whose voice still booms over a house intercom, reciting old judicial rulings and shouting demands.
If the father is a living reminder of the oppressive past, the ghost of the mother, a former actress who escaped his tyranny by suicide, also floats through the house. The other siblings are Alice, an alcoholic who fled to London with her husband, Eamon; and Casimir, a failed solicitor who lives in Germany and may or may not have a wife and three children.
In the midst of this reunion is Willie Diver, a local with whom the family once would not have socialized and is now the glue that holds it together, and Tom Hoffnung, an American who is taking notes for a book about the Catholic Irish aristocracy. If that aristocracy ignored the Irish Rebellion, it is even less concerned with the Troubles going on 20 miles away in Ulster. To whatever depths it may have fallen, it is still an isolated class answerable only to itself.
Mr. Friel has probed the decline of Irish identity in plays like “Philadelphia, Here I Come,” “Translations” and “Dancing at Lughnasa.” In “Aristocrats” the dry rot has set in. Ballybeg Hall, like the family that occupied it, is decaying, alive only in memories that are not always reliable. As Casimir regales the American with tales of the hall’s glory days — the parties with guest lists that included cardinals, Chesterton, both George and Thomas Moore, Yeats and O’Casey — it becomes clear that it is all a fantasy, no more real than the croquet game he plays with imaginary mallets, balls and wickets.
CHARLOTTE MOORE HAS DIRECTED A FINE CAST in a well-paced and low-key staging. John Keating is excellent as Casimir, wide-eyed and loquacious with a bark of a laugh, but unable to answer a direct question. Laura Odeh, Lynn Hawley and Orlagh Cassidy deliver solid performances as the three daughters, and Ciaran O’Reilly is especially good as Eamon, the local boy who loved one sister but married another. Sean Gormley adds a nice turn as Willie Diver.
What Other Critics Have to Say...
“BRIAN FRIEL'S ACHINGLY BEAUTIFUL 1979 play about the disintegration of Ireland's gentry, "Aristocrats," is so Chekhovian, you keep expecting his distinguished family to put down the whiskey bottle and start swigging tea from a samovar. IN THE IRISH REP'S METICULOUS REVIVAL, HELMER (AND COMPANY A.D.) CHARLOTTE MOORE ASSEMBLES A DREAM CAST to play the members of this diminished clan, gathered here at the bedside of their dying patriarch to wring their hands over their proud lost heritage and to illustrate Friel's belief in the healing power of storytelling to take a family, a village, a nation through troubled times. Irish Rep designers are old hands at transforming the theater's configuration into something intimate and involving. But set (James Morgan) and lighting (Brian Nason) designers outdo themselves here with a warm mise en scene of the library and garden of Ballybeg Hall, the grandest house in the village, on a golden day in high summer. Friel is a formidable storyteller, as he has shown in plays like "Dancing at Lughnasa" and "The Faith Healer." So it's no wonder that the vivid anecdotes (invariably involving Irish legends like Yeats and O'Casey) Casimir pulls from the family memory vault are mesmerizing. But the character is such an obvious fabulist that we are never sure when to believe him -- if at all. But does it really matter? Friel seems to be saying that, if you don't drink to escape the realities of a world grown too hard to bear, you might just as well tell a story to ease the pain.” — Variety
“Director Charlotte Moore's TOP-FLIGHT ENSEMBLE makes this Irish Rep revival VERY SATISFYING...” — NY Daily News
“With his customary mingling of humor, tragedy and lyrical, insightful dialogue, Brian Friel examined the decline of an upper-class Irish Catholic family in his 1979 play, "Aristocrats," which has been revived at off-Broadway's Irish Repertory Theatre. These O'Donnells have not all been together for at least 11 years. Their reunion is smoothed by flowing alcohol as they share childhood memories and try to bridge the years of separation. Many of them are unhappy, for various reasons that gradually are revealed UNDER THE ABLE DIRECTION OF CHARLOTTE MOORE. The only son, Casimir, PLAYED WITH CHARMING, DAMAGED QUIRKINESS BY JOHN KEATING, has always been effete, "peculiar," as he puts it. ORLAGH CASSIDY IS POIGNANT as the childless, self-mocking "alcoholic Alice," married to a working-class former villager, Eamon, and living in London. Among the capable ensemble cast, CIARAN O'REILLY IS OUTSTANDING WITH HIS MOVING PORTRAYAL OF EAMON. This final devolving of the aristocratic gene pool parallels the long decline of many upper-class dynasties THAT IS BEAUTIFULLY CONVEYED BY FRIEL'S RICH FAMILY DRAMA.” — Associated Press
“As in the plays of Chekhov, this is the drama of in-action, as Friel carefully peels back the layers of the truth about each of his characters, with the help of the American professor, who is actually less of a character than a device. What emerges is a portrait of a dying culture as poignant and compelling as anything in Chekhov. IRISH'S REP'S ARTISTIC DIRECTOR CHARLOTTE MOORE HAS DONE A FINE JOB OF DIRECTING THIS DELICATE PLAY, AND HER CAST IS ACROSS-THE BOARD EXCELLENT, which is typical at Irish Rep, anchored by Rep veterans Ciaran O'Reilly as Eamon and John Keating as Casimir.” — On the Aisle
“UNDER THE PERCEPTIVE DIRECTION OF CHARLOTTE MOORE, “ARISTOCRATS” IS BEING GIVEN AN ASTUTE PRODUCTION BY THE IRISH REPERTORY THEATRE. As the play unfolds it reveals much about the lives and attitudes of family members and who they are in terms of the Irish society that the author illuminates. James Morgan has designed an effective set that makes the most out of the tight stage conditions, and that helps set the right tone for examining those who inhabit it. By refocusing on Friel’s drama, the Irish Repertory Theatre has given us a timely opportunity to examine a work that exemplifies what Friel does so well—illuminating characters while at the same time placing them in the context of the world they represent." — William Wolf
“Tom Hoffnung (Rufus Collins) the American scholar for whom Ballybeg Hall, the setting for Brian Friel's 1979 play Aristocrats, is a research laboratory of sorts. As staged by the Irish Rep's artistic director Charlotte Moore, Tom's visit with the O'Donnells is given exactly the exactly right intimacy it calls for. The three sisters' personalities are well delineated by the actors portraying them. HOWEVER, EVEN ORLAGH CASSIDY'S ESPECIALLY VIVID PERFORMANCE AS THE ALCOHOLIC ALICE DOESN'T KEEP JOHN KEATING FROM DOMINATING THE STAGE AS THE INTENSE CASIMIR. His delusional life-of-the party joyfulness gives way to a devastating scene in which he speaks about becoming aware at age nine that he was different from other boys — an awareness cruelly reinforced by the father who told him "Had you been born down there you'd have become the village idiot. Fortunately for you, you were born here and we can absorb you." Keating so overwhelms the action, that some might accuse him of scene stealing. On the other hand, there's much to be said for the beautifully understated portrayal of Eamon by Ciarán O'Reilly, co-founder of the Irish Rep and its co-artistic producer.” — Curtain Up
Brian Friel was born in Omagh, County Tyrone in 1929, and in 1939 moved with his family to Derry. He now lives in County Donegal. He has published two collections of short stories, A Saucer of Larks and The Gold in the Sea. In 1980, he co-founded the Field Day Theatre Company in Derry. Brian Friel served in the Senate from 1987 to 1989. He has received honorary doctorates from the National University of Ireland, Trinity College, Dublin, Dublin City University, Magee University and Queen’s University, Belfast. He is an honorary fellow of University College, Dublin, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He was elected to Aosdána in 1982. His plays have premiered and been produced at prestigious venues like the Abbey Theatre, London’s West End and Broadway and have been highly successful everywhere. His first major play, Philadelphia, Here I Come! was the hit of the 1964 Dublin Theatre Festival. In 1972 he was elected as a member of the Irish Academy of Letters. In 1981, Translations, one of his seminal pieces, was awarded the Ewart-Biggs Peace Prize. Dancing at Lughnasa, probably his most successful play so far, received three Tony Awards in 1992, including Best Play.
Charlotte Moore ’s most recent directing assignments were Take Me Along, Gaslight, Meet Me in St. Louis, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, and Mr. Dooley’s America. Other directing credits include: Finian’s Rainbow at Joanne Woodward’s Westport Country Playhouse, She Stoops to Conquer, Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, the adaptation and direction of Finian’s Rainbow, Dion Boucicault’s The Colleen Bawn, J. Harley Manners’ Peg O’ My Heart, J.M.Synge’s Playboy of the Western World, and Dion Boucicault’s The Streets of New York, which she adapted and scored. New York stage appearances include Major Barbara, A Perfect Ganesh, Meet Me in St. Louis, The Perfect Party, Morning’s at Seven, Private Lives, Love for Love, Holiday, Chemin de Fer, The Great God Brown, A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur, and many performances with the New York Shakespeare Festival, with directors who include Harold Prince, Tony Walton, John Tillinger, Vivian Matalon, Paul Weidner, Brian Murray, Michael Montel, Edward Berkeley, Arvin Brown, Louis Burke, Steven Porter, and Ellis Rabb. Ms. Moore has directed forty-eight Irish Repertory Theatre productions and all twenty Gala Benefits. She has received two Tony Award nominations, the Outer Critics Circle Award, the Drama Desk Award, The Irish America Top 100 Irish Award, and the 2008 Irish Women Of The Year Award. She is the recipient of the 2008 Ambassador Award, the St. Patrick’s Committee in Holyoke’s John F. Kennedy National Award, and is listed as one of the “50 Most Influential Women” in the Irish America Magazine/Irish Voice Newspaper.
The cast features Orlagh Cassidy, Rufus Collins, Sean Gormley, Lynn Hawley, John Keating, Laura Odeh, Ciarán O’Reilly, and Geddeth Smith.
Set Design is by James Morgan, Costume Design by Linda Fisher, Lighting Design by Brian Nason, Sound Design by Zachary Williamson, and Wig and Hair Design by Robert-Charles Vallance. The Stage Manager is Pamela Brusoski. Assistant Stage Manager is Janice M. Brandine, Charlotte Moore, Artistic Director, Ciarán O’Reilly, Producing Director, Jeff Chrzczon, General Manager. |
