South Bend Theatre Presents THE SEAFARER, 6/3 - 19

"Are you in?" - South Bend Civic Theatre presents Conor McPherson's The Seafarer June 3rd- 19th in the Warner Studio Theatre South Bend Civic Theatre will give a chill to the beginning of summer with the dark Irish fable The Seafarer by Conor McPherson. On the outskirts of Dublin, Sharky and his recently blinded brother Richard host a Christmas Eve poker game with their drinking buddies, Ivan and Nicky. The mysterious Mr. Lockhart accompanies Nicky and joins the game, with a strange knowledge of Sharky's disreputable past. As the game proceeds amidst the booze and blarney, Lockhart raises the stakes so that Sharky may be playing for his very soul.

Director Mark Abram-Copenhaver has an exceptional ensemble for this dark and cunning play filled with gritty characters, black humor, and a touch of the supernatural. Matthew Bell is Richard, Tucker Curtis is Sharkey, Kevin Dreyer is Nicky, Dan Driscoll is Ivan, and Bill Svelmoe is Lockhart.

Abram-Copenhaver saw the play at Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago and has taught the play at St. Mary's, where he is a professor of theatre: "All of these experiences made me enjoy the play for its humor, its suspense. I find the play delightful for the fact that is starts out as a ‘kitchen drama' and suddenly, in the middle of the first act, it becomes a scary exploration of the eternal meaning of human existence. A neat trick." The Studio Theatre will have a unique feel for this production, inviting the audience even closer to the story: "there will be no audience/performer division in this play. The audience will be seated in the room with the characters. It should be fun... and a little scary."

The Seafarer had successful runs in London, on Broadway, and at Chicago's Steppenwolf theatre. The New York Times called the play "a long night's journey into day, with truly frightening glimpses of a darkness that stretches into eternity" and said "Mr. McPherson is considering the impenetrable, scary mystery that is being alive and the blundering ways that poor humans deal with it." The Chicago Tribune raved about The Seafarer as "a mythic, restless play that, weirdly, owes a little something to "A Christmas Carol"-is this prolific author's masterpiece and, in my view, far and away the best Irish play since the glory days of Samuel Beckett."

Playwright McPherson called The Seafarer simply "a fable about a struggle for redemption." But nothing is quite as it seems in this play. McPherson blended several strands of myth to create this haunting modern folk tale. The title of the work comes from an ancient Anglo-Saxon poem of the same name, and its primary character and McPherson's Sharky are kindred spirits, sharing the struggle of facing their demons or risk being damned.

The characters inhabit a male world were women are feared and desired. In an interview with the Chicago Tribune, McPherson said of the play's masculine world, "if a woman walked onto the set of The Seafarer, the play would be over. In the absence of women, men are able to revert to this infantile thing that liberates them from responsibility."

Speaking to the New York Times of the play's mythical roots, McPherson cited the Hellfire club of Celtic folklore where "land-owning, rich, English landed gentry would go and play cards and carouse. One night there's a knock on the door - it's a stormy night, and a stranger comes in to play cards with them, and he turns out to be the Devil. And at that stage in the story, the myth kind of ends because someone drops one of their playing cards and looks down and sees that the stranger has a cloven hoof, and with that, the stranger disappears in a puff of smoke. And I wanted to take that story into the next chapter, as it were. I wanted to see what would happen. Why was he there, and what was going on? So I sort of based this play around that."

The Seafarer runs June 3rd -June 19th in the Barbara K. Warner Studio Theatre at the South Bend Civic Theatre, 403 N. Main Street, South Bend. Performance times are Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00 pm, Wednesdays at 7:30 pm, and Sundays at 3:00 pm. Ticket prices are $17.00 for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday; $14.00 for Wednesdays and may be purchased either by calling the Box Office 574-234-1112 or in person Monday through Friday from 12-6 at 403 North Main St. or online by visiting www.sbct.org.

South Bend Civic Theatre would like to thank season sponsor Villing and Company and Studio series sponsor Ameriprise Financial for their contributions.

 

 

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