The Seafarer

by Conor McPherson
February 9 - March 7, 2010
Quadracci Powerhouse Theater
(Contains adult language)

WHISKEY, FESTIVITY AND IRISH ROWDINESS

“Time deepens and slows down somehow in a card game – it could be any moment. It’s always the same moment.”
–Mr. Lockhart, THE SEAFARER

Join us in the Quadracci Powerhouse Theater this February for an evening of whiskey, festivity and Irish rowdiness – and the most unlikely of Christmas stories! Rep Resident Acting Company Members Jon Daly, Lee Ernst, Jim Pickering and Rep favorites Chris Tarjan and Jonathan Smoots appear in Conor McPherson’s THE SEAFARER, a lively and enthralling tale of drinking, secrets and revelation. If you enjoyed The Rep’s production of THE WEIR, you’ll love this delicious and dark comedy where risk is the name of the game and redemption may be slipping out of reach.

It’s Christmas Eve in Dublin and brothers Sharky and Richard Harkin are celebrating with an inordinate amount of drinking, poker and a trio of holiday guests: Ivan, who lost his glasses in last night’s revelries; Nicky, who is keeping company with Sharky’s ex; and the mysterious Mr. Lockhart, a dapper stranger who has a secret meant for Sharky’s ears alone.

In a run-down flat, strewn with whiskey bottles, beer cans, dirty dishes and last night’s take-out containers, these inebriate Irishmen subsist on liquor, self-loathing and destruction. Though the elder brother, Richard, has recently gone blind and his friend, Ivan, can’t see without his lost glasses, it is Sharky’s struggles with drunkenness and violence that have left him spiritually blind to the costs of his own human folly. Grasping onto the most tenuous threads of a newly-found sobriety, Sharky’s past actions and poor choices have left him in a secret prison of his own guilt, anxiety and moral failings. When the stranger from Sharky’s distant past turns up, the whiskey starts to look tempting and every card that Sharky bets could be his last; when everything is on the line, who will win the game? Tonight just might be the darkest night of Sharky’s soul.

Within the dark and mysterious corners of Celtic myth and history, and under the weight of his own personal struggles with alcoholism, McPherson discovered an inspiration for his play in the transformative power of the faintest ray of light:

“There’s this monument in Ireland, not very big, a 5,000-year-old tomb called Newgrange. It’s got a long tunnel with a little hole in the middle of it, and on [winter solstice] each year, the sun shines directly down that chamber and lights it up – on the darkest day of the year. That image was mind-blowing to me – so simple, spiritual, amazing. I wanted to write a play that had that moment.”

As the all-night bender of liquor and laughs grows late, the stakes get higher and higher as we watch a tense battle between addiction and pathos, and between responsibility and forgiveness. Originally presented in 2006 at the National Theatre in London, and winner of the Olivier and Evening Standard Awards for Best New Play, THE SEAFARER transferred to Broadway in 2007 and was nominated for four Tony Awards, including Best Play.

Kristin Crouch, Literary Director

THE REP IN DEPTH
Join us for The Rep In Depth, our lively informative half-hour talk which starts 45 minutes before every performance in the Quadracci Powerhouse Theater. This Rep In Depth will be led by Resident Acting Company Member Jonathan Gillard Daly.