Brat Productions’ CRAIC Fringes the Irish Theatre Fest

2011-05-07 12:05:08 Christopher Munden l Stage Magazine l Full Article Here

There are some 400 million native English-language speakers in the world and about 6 million of them live

on the island of Ireland, but the Emerald Isle seems to have produced much more than its share of great

writers and playwrights. This season saw six companies collaborate in a Philadelphia Irish Theatre

Festival featuring eight works of contemporary Irish theatre.

For one week only, BRAT Productions is getting in on the act with LAST CALL, a series of short Irish bar

tales read one-a-day at Fergie’s Pub in Center City Philadelphia. Three of the four plays are works by

Conor McPherson, perhaps the best new playwright to come from Ireland in recent decades.

McPherson’s unique blend of supernatural intensity with real human interaction has brought international

acclaim, with both the Telegraph (London) and the New York Times calling him “the finest dramatist of his

generation” (of any nationality).

“I love his use of language,” says Madi Destefano, artistic co-director of Brat and director of two of the

readings in the series. “Conor McPherson has taken the Irish tall tale form and made it resonate with

contemporary audiences. His shaggy dog tall tales are full of urban debauchery and the narrators are

confessing their innermost thoughts, things that they wouldn’t normally share.”

McPherson’s Dublin Carol was produced by Amaryllis Theatre as part of the Irish Theatre Festival, and

recent years have seen numerous area production of his work, with The Weir (Curio Theatre) and Shining

City (Theatre Exile) two of the best shows of Philly’s 2009/10 season. It was Brat Productions which

helped introduce McPherson’s work to area audiences, presenting McPherson Festivals of his work in

2001 and 2002.

Several works from those festivals are being reprised in Brat’s LAST CALL. LIME STREET BOWER (see

dates and times below) features Matt Pfeiffer as Frank, the elder brother of a character he played in the

same play in 2001/02. Pfeiffer has since become recognized as one of the area’s best directors, so it’s

great to see him returning to his fringey roots with a bar-stage reading.

The star of McPherson’s THE GOOD THIEF should be well-known to local audiences as a premiere

performer of Irish theatre. William Zilienski performed in the recent Lieutenant of Inishmore, last season’s

Shining City, and was stellar in McPherson’s The Seafarer (Arden Theatre, 2009). He received Brat’s first

Barrymore nomination in 2002 for his role in RUM AND VODKA, a part performed in this year’s LAST

CALL by Sean Lally.

Rounding out the CRAIC is the exhilarating HOWIE THE ROOKIE. “It’s very violent,” says Distefano,

director of the piece. “There are two monologues which tell the same story from two different perspectives

and it all starts over a mattress with scabies. . . . The language is very broken up and in the vernacular. It’s

poetic like McPherson’s work but it’s it has a sort of beat to it.”

The recent Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts proved the value of a unifying marketing effort by

arts organizations (although it’s focus on Paris 1910 to 1920 was a little peculiar, ignoring as it did the

horrifying conflict of that decade—World War I—which killed almost 5 percent of the French population). In

many ways, PIFA compared favorably with the Live Arts Festival, with the Kimmel Center’s sponsorship

allowing it to reach almost all aspects of the city’s art world. But without the grungy plays in alternative

allowing it to reach almost all aspects of the city’s art world. But without the grungy plays in alternative

theater spaces that the Philly Fringe brings to the Live Arts Festival, PIFA lacked the energy of the annual

fest.

“It was really just being silly,” says Distefano. “We obviously haven’t really created a fringe festival around

the Irish Theatre Festival, but a place like Fergie’s is right for these pieces. I like site-specific theater when

it really lends itself to the piece. Even hearing the bar and the laughter and chinking up from downstairs is

part of the whole atmosphere.” Irish theater indeed.

.

LAST CALL: Brat’s Craic fringes the Irish Theatre Festival.

Fergie’s Pub

1214 Sansom Street,

Philadelphia, PA

Brat Productions

267.601.2231

HOWIE THE ROOKIE

by Mark O’Rowe

Directed by Madi Distefano

5/8- 5pm, 5/13- 3pm, 5/15- 5pm

THIS LIME TREE BOWER

by Conor Mcpherson

Directed by Madi Distefano

5/8-8pm, 5/9-6pm

RUM AND VODKA

by Conor McPherson

Directed by Lee Ann Etzold

5/10- 6pm, 5/16 -6pm

THE GOOD THIEF

by Conor McPherson

Directed by Candace O’Neil Cihocki

5/12- 6pm, 5/14- 5pm