Review: OUTSIDE MULLINGAR at Corrib Theatre

There's a particular kind of melancholy that settles over you like a damp wool coat: heavy, familiar, not entirely unpleasant, often surprisingly funny. John Patrick Shanley's Tony-nominated play OUTSIDE MULLINGAR, now running at Corrib Theatre under Holly Griffith's direction, is soaked in it.

The play centers on two neighboring families in the rural Irish countryside. Tony Reilly (Bruce Burkhartsmeier) and his son Anthony (Rolland Walsh) live next door to Aoife Muldoon (Jo Pierce) and her daughter Rosemary (Saren Nofs Snyder). As the play opens, the four are returning from the funeral of Aoife's husband, and the rain is as persistent as the grief.

Each character is carrying something. Tony, crotchety but endearing in Burkhartsmeier's excellent hands, lost his wife some time ago and suspects his days are numbered. He's wrestling with whether to leave the farm to Anthony, worried that his son doesn't truly love the land, and haunted by fears about the boy's mental inheritance from his maternal grandfather. Anthony, for his part, has given his life to the farm, but even he doesn’t seem to know if that was out of love or necessity.

Aoife is at peace with being near the end of her life’s journey, though she worries that when she dies, Rosemary will be left alone. And Rosemary, who would rather smoke out in the rain than join them in the kitchen, is exactly that: alone.

At the center of the play is a land dispute that's also a metaphor. Thirty years ago, Tony sold the Muldoons a strip of land in front of the Reilly house. It's a small thing that has become enormous. Whoever owns that strip controls access to the road, and it now stands as a physical embodiment of the emotional walls Anthony and Rosemary have built around themselves over the years.

Their story is one of near-middle-aged people stumbling hesitantly toward something that might be love, or might just be inevitability. Anthony has kept people at a distance since a strange, wounding secret he told a girlfriend at 16 ended badly. Rosemary has driven away all potential suitors, and now they’ve stopped coming. Neither has any experience with intimacy. Will they share their secrets? Like the strip of land, will those secrets turn out to be small speedbumps or enormous obstacles to their being together?

I caught the first preview performance, before the production was fully settled, but you wouldn't have known it. The cast perfectly captured the sweet, funny weirdness of their characters: people at different stages of life, looking back with regret and forward with something between resignation and hope. There’s live music, performed by Betsy Branch, Trevor Cormack, and Kevin Grgurich, which sets the mood and is woven beautifully into the show. Arrive early to enjoy some before curtain.

OUTSIDE MULLINGAR is a gentle play about what we inherit, what we carry, and what we might, if we're brave enough, finally set down. It runs through April 19 at Coho Theatre. Details and tickets here.