Janie Brookshire and Shawn Fagan in a scene from Wife to James Whelan
(Photo credit: Carol Rosegg)
Unlike the Mint Theater Company’s rediscovery of plays by such well-known names as D. H. Lawrence, Arthur Schnitzler, James M. Barrie, and Edith Wharton, its U.S. premiere of Teresa Deevy’s Wife to James Whelan represents an author virtually unknown to American theatergoers.
The Mint continues its mission to present worthy but neglected plays with a two season tribute to the work of Deevy who in her own time went from “Ireland’s leading woman playwright” to obscurity and to later election to the Irish Academy of Letters. Jonathan Bank, the Mint’s artistic director, has staged the play with loving care in order to bring this author to a wider audience.
Deevy’s career began with six premieres at the Abbey Theater, Ireland’s national theater, during the years 1930 – 1936 when it was run by Seán Ó Faoláin and W.B. Yeats. However, she ran afoul of the new regime that arrived when Ernest Blythe, former Minister of Finance, took over the artistic reins. Blythe took the Abbey in the direction of light comedies and plays without messages. This explains his rejection of Wife to James Whelan, set in 1937, showing a woman of strength and integrity coping the with desperate financial circumstances of the Great Depression.
After the play’s rejection by the Abbey, Deevy wrote exclusively for radio for the next decade. Even today, woman playwrights have a difficult time at the Abbey: in its centennial year, readings were performed of classic Irish plays by John Millington Synge and W.B. Yeats, but not by Lady Gregory who was one of the theater’s three co-founders. Wife to James Whelan was performed on the radio in a shortened version in 1946 and in a brief run at Dublin’s Studio Theater Club in 1956. However, the manuscript was lost until 1995 when it was found by Deevy’s nephew, and the current production is the first since 1956. The play appears not to have been published at this date.
Deevy’s play is challenging in various ways. Chekhovian in tone, the play’s first act is almost entirely a prologue with the real action of the play not beginning until the second of its three acts. Like Chekhov’s dramas, the play is motivated by character, not by plot or incident. Very little happens and the characters remain the same throughout while coping with their circumstances. Although on the surface extremely realistic, the characters often speak in heightened expressionist dialogue which verges on poetry.
While much of this is true of the plays of Sean O’Casey, Deevy in this play keeps her canvas and events confined, rather than creating the kind of large social tapestry that O’Casey made popular. And strangest of all, the play’s title is a misnomer for most of its running time as James Whelan has no wife throughout the play. The play’s real protagonist is the stalwart Nan Bowers, not the eponymous James.
Set in the small Irish town of Kilbeggan, the local men are awaiting word of which of them has been chosen for a prize job that will take the winner to Dublin for six months. All the men interviewed consider the go-getting James Whelan the leading candidate. James (played by Shawn Fagan) is aggressive, arrogant and single-minded in his plan to be a winner. Although attracted to James, possibly in spite of his drive and determination, Nan Bowers (Janie Brookshire), with whom he has been keeping company, is not pleased that the job will take him away from Kilbeggan. She thinks he should be content with what he has. The ambitious James will not consider remaining and tells her he expects her to wait for him. When he leaves, neither of them has made any promises.
Seven years pass in which James has not returned for Nan, and she, in the meantime, has married and been left a widow with a small child to feed. As predicted, James has become a financial success, and returned to Kilbeggan, where he is in the process of founding Silver Wings Motor Services. Having been left nothing by her husband, Nan comes to James’ office to ask for a job as a cleaner, the first time they have met in six years. But the tables are now turned: where once Nan could do the choosing among the men in town, she is now virtually a beggar compared to the solid and financially secure James. Nan also finds herself in competition with Nora Keane (Liv Rooth), the beautiful daughter of the richest man in town, and Kate Moran (Rosie Benton), once James’ next-door neighbor and now his closest confidante.
While James is pursued by the three women in his life, Nan’s quiet integrity and inability to be swayed from her strong beliefs makes her attractive to all the men: the brutish Bill McGafferty (Jeremy S. Holm), the sensitive Tom Carey (Aidan Redmond), the romantic Jack McClinsey (Thomas Matthew Kelley), and the ambitious James. James’ relationship with the women seems to be modeled on those portrayed in Chekhov’s Three Sisters in which the women’s lives revolve around a brother in whom they place their future fortunes, with each a totally different type.
The choice of Fagan and Brookshire in the leading roles seems to go much against type. James is described by Deevy as well built. As a man who from the earliest time has galvanized an entire community by his pursuits and has all three women pining for him, he ought to be a charismatic character. Fagan is more of the tough, wiry fighter, a pugnacious James Cagney type rather than the golden boy that the play suggests that he is.
By the same token, that the soft-spoken Nan is desired by all the men implies that she should be a radiant presence. Brookshire makes her a kind of mousey but stalwart woman who endures but does not make it believable that four men are in love with her. The other actors play various Irish types with much success, aside from the unaccountable casting of Jon Fletcher as Kate’s younger brother who lacks the glamour needed for someone nicknamed “Apollo” because of his looks.
Benton gives Kate a confident, self-possessed air, while Rooth carries off the flirtatious scenes with Fagan with flying colors. Redmond’s Tom is fine as a quiet, gentle man who carries a torch for Nan, while Holm makes Bill a bully without pushing it too far. As Jack, Kelley strikes the right note of the romantic in his one short scene with Brookshire.
Rural Ireland is brought to life by Vicki R. Davis’ two spare settings which are atmospherically lit by Nicole Pearce. Martha Hally has designed the depression era costumes that define each of the characters from the moment we first see them. Teresa Deevy’s Wife to James Whelan is a play that is more powerful on reflection, than in performance. It will be interesting to see how this play compares to the others that the Mint Theater will premiere in its two-year Deevy Festival.
Wife to James Whelan (through October 3)
Mint Theater Company, 311 W, 43rd Street, 3rd Floor, in Manhattan
For tickets, call 212-315-0231 or http://www.minttheater.org