Who’s-Dead McCarthy: Stories by Kevin Barry
Kevin Barry
Word for Word
In its 31st year of transforming “the page to the stage,” Word for Word once again celebrates the literary genre of the short story by bringing to the intimate stage of Z Below three delightful gems by a much awarded, contemporary, Irish writer in Who’s-Dead McCarthy: Stories by Kevin Barry. The stories offered are bursting with the local color and idiosyncratic language of the Emerald Isle and with humor ranging from gentle to naughty. They are also steeped with an impeccable familiarity of the human spirit – its heart and hopes, fears and foibles, triumphs and tragedies (both minor and major). All are delivered in the third person, each with two principal characters and all with a host of passers-by, pop-up appearances, and illustrators of a related memory, dream, bit of gossip, or even erotic fantasy. With a sure deftness for timing and temperament and often with some tongue-in-cheek, Paul Finocchiaro directs a multi-talented cast of six to produce an evening full of sighs and laughs and maybe a couple of tears.
The evening’s triplet of tales begins with “The Coast of Leitrim,” a story of unlikely love between a recluse Seamus Ferris now living in a cottage in Dromord Hill inherited from his uncle and a recent, equally shy Polish arrival, Katherine Zielinski, working at a café in nearby Carrick. As related through the puppy-love eyes, self-revealing words, and widely ranging feelings of Seamus, the story quickly becomes a winner through the absolutely magnetic draw of Ryan Tasker’s tender, expressive, boyish depiction of a thirty-five-year-old Seemus who drives his car every night to hide near the town’s bridge to watch with bated breath Katherine – who once served him coffee and a bun – cross to head home after work to her apartment.
A man who feels so out of place that he “might as well have had three heads” realizes all he must do is “string out the first few words from his mouth” to start a conversation with a woman he has already stalked on Instagram, discovering to his relief she only has six postings and fourteen followers (and no sign of either a boyfriend or a child). But just imaging doing so has his “stomach tumbled” and himself in a fetal position on his couch at the mere thought of approaching her verbally. Seamus’ solution: Communicate with her in thoughts only.
Monica Slater beautifully conveys the quiet, pensive, and surprisingly out-of-the-blue-bold nature of Katherine. She is someone perfectly comfortable as a “companion in silence” with the oft-mute Seamus; but once the two finally have a first date, she is also one willing to act on her own belief that “we must each of us dream our loves into our existence,” securing a first kiss that maybe would have taken Seemus months more to attain.
Together and through the poetic prose of Barry, the relationship between Seamus and Katherine takes them and us on a journey with some twists and turns rivaling the backroads they also travel to wander together the sands of the nearby coast. The main roadblock their journey encounters is Seamus’ own panicky, short-breathed confession of “He could handle almost anything but a happy outcome.”
From the shores of Leitrim we next board a train traveling through a number of small towns on its way to Dublin as we both hear and watch unfold our second short story, “The Wintersongs.” On board and sitting together by chance are a young girl of seventeen, Sarah (Ailbhe Doherty), intent on listening to her IPod and not at all interested in engaging with a fidgeting, huffing and puffing, and incessantly talking Old Woman (Stephanie Hunt) of some unknown, but surely ancient age. As one looks away as much as possible and only nods as necessary to the inquisitive questions of the other, the miles pass with the Old Woman telling stories (loud enough for all in the train car to hear) of a woman she knows with size 14 shoes, a car accident she caused and a subsequent date in front of a wigged judge, a man she once saw in the woods buried happily up to his neck, and her near-disaster encounter with two loan sharks after six months of her losing money at the horse tracks. These are just a few of the tidbits spilling out of her mouth like a never-ending waterfall.
Apart from the hilarity of the yarns she spins, just watching the puckering lips and yet also wide-as-a-cave mouth, the quick-batting and all-knowing eyes, and the lean-ins of her body toward a Sarah who seems ready any minute to jump out the window – all this and more make Stephanie Hunt a hoot to behold and an Old Woman soon to endear herself to us. Slowly, something happens to Sarah in relation to this pest of a fellow passenger causing some melting of her polite but restrained responses and in the end – something that will cause her to leave the train knowing that from now on, “Every walk down every street will change her.”
Death dominates the third of the evening’s enacted narratives (“Who’s-Dead McCarthy”). Now in Limerick, a Narrator (Joel Mullennix) tells us with sparkle in his eyes and admiration in his voice of a local vagabond whose “occupation plainly was with death.” Wandering the streets, exploring the graveyards, and often just sitting on a bench overlooking the dark, swirling waters of the Shannon River where many a drowning have occurred, Con McCarthy cannot wait to tell anyone who happens to be in his presence the sad and sometimes gory details of the town’s latest death. John Flanagan more than lives up to the Narrator’s description of Con when the story’s teller says, “He had about forty different faces,” each according to the type of death he was announcing. The Narrator also tells us that “his role as a messenger of death” had a “grim but vital place in a small city.” With a West Ireland accent that rings quite authentically (Lynne Soffer, dialect coach) and a fabulous mixture of woe and glee in relating a tumble off a ladder or a goring by a raging bull’s horn, John Flanagan reigns supreme as the grinning harbinger of death whom maybe any of us – like the citizens of Limerick – would cross to the other side of the street once seeing him approaching.
During each of these stand-alone stories, all those not serving as narrator take on what seems like dozens of other roles. Maybe it is Katherine acting out Seamus’ nighttime dream of their hot sex together or his nightmare of her running off with a hot steel worker from Poland. Maybe it is one of the views of Con’s carefully detailed death scenes as an old lady doesn’t make it across the busy road. Or it can just be other passengers or the conductor on a train, a reprimanding judge, a pilot flying a toy plane across the stage, or heads popping out of the wings or on the other side of the stage’s stone bridge to recite the next line of the word-for-word telling of Barry’s stories. What becomes more and more fascinating is how many different changes of costumes the cast of six make (Nolan Miranda, master designer with always a touch of humor stitched into every seam) and how quickly members reappear in a role different from the last quick sighting (usually only seconds, not minutes in total length).
A nobly arched stone bridge dominates the scenic design of Jeff Rowlings and plays a major role in two of the three stories. The scenes of towns, coast, and countryside are established by Rowling’s designed background projections along with his lighting scheme that spots in timely fashion the quick-appearing/disappearing ensemble members as well as sets the time of day and night of the various scenes. Matt Stines connects scenes and stories with the music of Ireland, a score that would be fun to have as a follow-up download.
While I am sure each audience member will leave with one of the three stories as a personal favorite, for me it was the first and longest, “The Coast of Leitrim,” in which wonderful character development and plot surprises combine for a funny and heart-touching telling. Together, these three examples of Kevin Barry’s writings leave me wanting to read more of his works in much the same way as each visit to Z Space to see a Word for Word production always entices me to return to witness the next undertaking by this San Francisco treasure.
Rating: 4 E
A TheatreEddys Best Bet Production
Who’s-Dead McCarthy: Stories by Kevin Barry continues through July 21, 2024, in an approximately 90-100 minute production (plus intermission) at Z Below, 450 Florida Street, San Francisco. Tickets are available online at http://www.zspace.org . (Note, masks will be required by all attendees on July 18.)
Photo Credits: Robbie Sweeny
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