Theater Review (NYC): ‘Herself’

“The past is never dead,” William Faulkner wrote. “It’s not even past.” Buried secrets emerge; patterns repeat; old evils gain new avatars. Sometimes a specific place is the locus of an intermingling of past and present. In Herself, Tim McGillicuddy’s new play, O’Leary’s Pub is such a place.

The denizens of this watering hole in Galway on Ireland’s west coast face a bewildering drama when a death in the family prompts a prodigal daughter’s return. The Drilling Company world premiere, part of Origin Theatre Company’s 1st Irish Festival, revolves around a bravura performance by Kathleen Simmonds as Maureen. A successful businessperson in New York with no plans to move back to Ireland, Maureen arrives home upon her brother Jim’s suicide to find that he has left the pub to her.

Ladies and Gentlemen: Herself

Their father (Hamilton Clancy, who also directs) is the local real estate tycoon and has his own ideas about the fate of the decrepit pub. The staff and regulars don’t foresee good things from the new owner. And Maureen herself must confront some things about herself she might not be too ready to face. She does so at first with fury and hysteria, later with spirit and grit.

Simmonds is a firestorm burning up the stage, whether mourning, lashing out, dancing, celebrating, maniacally bossing, or testing the depths of her strange and multilayered relationship with her local priest and childhood friend (Skyler Gallun) – a relationship that the play treats with compassion and verisimilitude. She is a first-among-equals in an excellent ensemble cast, and her character also undergoes the biggest change – or better to say, the biggest deepening before our eyes. It takes nothing away from the other actors to observe that Simmonds’ gravitational force both binds them in orbit and fuels them.

McGillicuddy has a great facility with marshaling forward plot motion and character development among a fairly large cast, and an even greater talent for sharply honed, natural-sounding dialogue. Some of the actors’ Irish brogues are better than others, but they all deliver effective performances.

There are some plot points I didn’t quite get. An old letter sheds light on a rumor about Jim’s true parentage, but I couldn’t glean the meaning of the words that were revealed. What is it that touched off a huge conflict between an engaged couple? We’re told that unhoused people congregate outside the pub, but did that have anything to do with the organized protest we hear through the windows of the pub at the beginning of Act II? What’s the protest about?

It also didn’t help that the in-the-round staging meant that when a softer-spoken character was facing away from me I sometimes couldn’t make out what they were saying.

Still and all, Act I was pure theatrical joy. I like pubs, real or fictional, and that liking extends to a good pub play.

A Disappointing Finish

The glory faded in the second act. The complex story, beautifully unfolded thus far, dehydrated. A huge and unexpected event seemed tacked on for shock’s sake and left me feeling deprived of some of the additional development of characters and relationships that the fine performances from the supporting cast in the first act seemed to promise.

That’s why I can’t recommend Herself unreservedly. But when it’s good, which it is most of the way, it’s very, very good. And Simmonds’ dangerous performance is in itself worth the price of admission.

Herself runs through April 20 at A.R.T/New York Theatres in Manhattan. Tickets are available online.