This intimate drama with music has an off-putting title. It's awkward, Joyce's name isn't going to sell many tickets, and I heard some patrons didn't want to see a show about death. There's nothing Arden artistic director Terry Nolen can do about that, of course. What he has done is mount a quiet, sensitive production of this lovely little play. He's staged it so we feel that we're eavesdropping in the home of Dublin's Morkan sisters on the occasion of their annual Christmas-time dinner party. The actors play to each other, often turning their backs to most of the audience. There's no amplification, and the action flows continuously from dialogue to song and back to dialogue, with no pauses. After a while the audience realizes that the best way to show appreciation is to hold applause til after the final blackout.
"The Dead" is a chapter in James Joyce's book about Irish life in the first years of the 20th century, "The Dubliners." James Joyce's The Dead is a musicalized stage treatment of that short story. It lost 2000's Best Musical Tony Award to Contact, but was honored for the best book of a musical. The score is adapted from period Irish sources, and I love the way Richard Nelson and Shaun Davey arranged the material and presented it as part of an evening's entertainment in a Dublin home in the days before Victrolas and radio. Death hovers over the action in a way, but the focus is on the living and on their small, daily problems.
Immerse yourself in the dialogue and you'll soon feel affection for the elderly sisters and their guests, even the ne'er-do-well alcoholic Freddy who is an embarrassment to his mother. You'll find yourself empathizing with the middle-aged Gabriel, who adores his wife and finds that one of the evening's songs is a reflection of her long-hidden passion for a man she loved in her youth.
Nolen's direction moves from living room to dining room to bedroom with naturalness. The ensemble acting is superb. Special mention goes to Greg Wood as Gabriel, who also serves as narrator; Derin Altay, with her lovely lyric soprano, as his wife; and Mary Kate McGrath, whose personality and richly projected voice jump out at you during her brief moments. The character she plays, Molly, has a longer, more meaningful part in the original story, personalizing the Irish struggle for independence and the start of feminist activism, but that was cut when this show was crafted.
Don't expect action or show-stopping numbers. Do enjoy a poignant visit to a long-gone time and place.
