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This is a work, after all, that's fueled by snake oil. McPherson, long a dramatic champion of the Irish working man, has apparently believed that, as with many of his other works (The Night Alive, Shining City, The Seafarer), extraordinary character may be unlocked within the distinctive ordinariness of the three men he chronicles. He wraps this within a tale in triplicate of loves (yes, plural) gone wrong, and delivers them in the form of some 15, mostly disconnected, monologues that the actors and their director must unite into something both cohesive and compelling. When director Henry Wishcamper brought together Brian D'Arcy James and Jim Norton for two of the roles in the 2008 New York premiere production (the play was originally performed in London in 2001), that happened—but even then, only to a degree. There's only so much anyone can do to enliven what amounts to oral history about unremarkable events, in which even those speaking try to shirk from the notion that they actually participated in the events they described. Though director Ciarán O'Reilly has captured a vivid snapshot of the inertia that governs the lives of the young Kevin (played here by James Russell), the middle-aged Dermot (Billy Carter), and the older Joe (Peter Maloney), he hasn't been able to guide his performers even gently beyond the point where this might translate into engaging drama. The actors must work incredibly hard (perhaps too hard) to draw you into their characters' experiences; here, it's as though you're eavesdropping on someone else's private conversation in a noisy bar: You catch the words, but none of the emotional or psychological context that might elevate them. Maloney comes closest in his explanation of how Joe courted the idea of romantically pursuing his wife's friend while his wife was recovering from an operation. Combining as he does a youthful energy with a world weariness and dark notes of regret in his voice, Maloney capably evokes the sense of being torn between past and present, or between fantasy and reality (in Port Authority, there's not much difference). He wages that conflict in his eyes, sparkling but sad, as though he can see in both directions at once and isn't sure in which he should move. Because this is the most significant thread that unites the men, it's a quality that should show up in the other actors' performances, but never bubbles to the surface with equivalent force. Kevin, tasting for the first time independence and the ravenous appetites of the fairer sex, seems too at ease: Russell may be suggesting Kevin's one-dimensionality, but he also needs to be haunted by possibilities, and Russell's sunny demeanor banishes all trace of shadows. Carter's Dermot swings in the other direction, bearing a crippling, self-conscious complexity that prevents him from building the wall of contentment around himself that must eventually be torn down. One of the lessons of the evening is that there's no good use for such walls; even Charlie Corcoran's scenic design, which depicts one of stone against an endless field of disjointed blue sky (lighted by Michael Gottlieb), seems to threaten the men and us as it towers above, and casts shadows on, our comfortable existences. For the play to work, we'd need to feel like we're constantly in danger of it tumbling down, something neither McPherson nor O'Reilly encourages. When so much is so safe, it's just not that easy to buy what boring, self-involved people are selling, and there aren't many other kinds to be found in this Port Authority.
Port Authority
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