Bird Sanctuary, The

You wouldn't know it from the way Eleanor Henryson has strewn flowers, paints, papers, table, chairs around the dingy room. Nor from the colored-photo-like portraits of a man against one side of the worn, flowery-papered back wall or the mother with her young children on the other. Eleanor has to tell you that this room overlooks a wonderful Dublin Bird Sanctuary. She's made herself a recluse, painting to memorialize it. So, too, she wants to preserve the house, once so handsome that Queen Victoria stopped to look in. Eleanor's mother recently died there, and she's sure she will die if it's sold. But hated sister Marianne has come from England to sell her share, and their brother Robert, in debt from compulsive gambling, is ready to comply. No use passing it on to Stephen, his gay son and his mother Tina's "curse."

Marianne's children? As English as their father, who, by the way, wants to leave her for a woman from Tasmania. The more you know about Irish history, the more you see how emblematic of Ireland is the Henryson family. The less you know, the most important facts revealed are that the Bird Sanctuary may be in the way of development that is mercilessly gentrifying Dublin, that the environment is endangered and that the very island is eroding. Nature affected by human nature.

However imperfect, the solution lies in Eleanor reverting to pagan ritual -- as part of a party -- to clear up Marianne's problem in exchange for her share of the house. About the Henryson patriarch, how he raised his children, and how he died, there's a lot of discussion also, but it mainly beefs up Robert's role. Drink gives Tina the courage to chime in with her orthodox, mainly Catholic, views. Mostly, she's out of the picture just as she isn't in Eleanor's paintings. These are simulated in the finale by their subjects, now mature: a fitting directorial touch.

One room, as designed by Michael Schweikardt, serves both real and symbolic functions, helped by Phil Monat's moody lighting. Zach Moore's use of harp music is apt. You may, though, wish Eleanor's paintings were better, or at least less prosaic. Shouldn't they be  more impressive if her art aims to memorialize a great house and its surroundings? And perhaps that it is also true of Elizabeth Franz's interpretation of Eleanor. Eccentric to a fault, she's so strung out from the very first scene that the heights of anguish she has to reach come up seeming rather flat. Nor would you guess she's Irish.

Hayley Mills has an excuse for (in a reversal of a historical saying) being more English than the English themselves: Marianne has made herself that as an aristocrat's wife. Mills speaks and acts with assurance, never being unlikeable -- although whether in context that's good or bad is hard to say.

Surely to the good, Martin Reynolds puts charm into weak Robert. In a subordinate, loosely defined role, Westley Whitehead finds the right note to play son Stephen, most effectively when satirizing Marianne's husband. The one character you'll recognize as Irish, challenging the text's tendency to have her be merely the long-suffering and complaining Oirish wife-`n-mither, is Tina. And a grand job Diane Ciesla does with her, in her chips and out.

Kent Paul and staff have obviously put much effort into a full and well-coordinated production. But the play comes off as one of playwright Frank McGuinness' lesser efforts.