You've read the reviews. Now read the book. THEATRE'S LEITER SIDE, 2012-2013 A Brief Memoir and Reviews
“Three Strong
Women”
Let me begin this report on Little Gem, Elaine Murphy’s
2008 rumination on modern Irish motherhood, at the Irish Repertory Theatre, by
setting the picture for you. Other than the dialogue placing most of the action
in Dublin (a few moments take place in Paris), the play’s locale is undefined. Since
women’s issues tie the narrative together, director Marc Atkinson Borrull and designer
Meredith Ries have set it in the minimalist environs of a women’s health clinic
waiting room, with its standard chairs and medical posters. Wonderfully, Michael
O’Connor’s sensitive lighting makes this sterile space emotionally evocative. (Murphy,
be it noted, wrote the play while working in a women’s health clinic.)  |
| Brenda Meaney. Photo: Carol Rosegg. |
Divided into six scenes, in each of which the three women, in
turn, deliver their lines directly to the audience, it covers what seems to be something
more than a year in this family’s lives. As each speaks, the others sit or
stand nearby, listening. Occasionally, they may even be directly addressed. The
effect suggests they’re sharing a joint memory, each from her own viewpoint.
What those memories reveal isn’t particularly unique as far
as dramatic material goes. Making it special is the richly imagined language in
which the material is couched, filled with colorful imagery and slang, much of
it profane (lots of “shites” and “fucks”), sexually candid, and emotionally
vibrant.
Judging by their language, attitudes, and appearances, Kay, Lorraine,
and Amber seem to reside on the border of working and middle-class. Apart from
their thick brogues, and their fondness for alcoholic beverages and their various
local references, there’s little about them that makes them different from any loving
family you might know on this side of the pond. They’ve got problems, but who
doesn’t?
 |
| Lauren O'Leary. Photo: Carol Rosegg. |
Amber is a somewhat aimless girl, out for a good time, fond
of her sambucas, lines, and spliffs, who gets knocked up by the feckless Paul. Her
pregnancy, complicated by Paul’s abandonment of his responsibilities, and ultimate
motherhood, is one of the three main threads.
 |
| Marsha Mason. Photo: Carol Rosegg. |
Lorraine, a department store salesperson, is divorced from
Ray, a junky who stole from her but for whom she still carries a modicum of
feeling. Insecure, and seeing a shrink she calls “the lady,” she relies on meds
like Xanax to control her moods. She’s romantically blocked but eventually
finds affection in the arms of Niall, whom she met at a salsa class, and whose hirsuteness
offers a running joke.
 |
| Marsha Mason. Photo: Carol Rosegg. |
Kay, the matriarch, not only is concerned about the problems
of her daughter and granddaughter but must care for Gem, the stroke-addled
husband she adores and to whose wellbeing she’s devoted. Hungry for sex, she suffers
from a gynecological “itch” and is advised to purchase a sex aid, which she
calls Kermit (it’s green). By the play’s end she’s both a great-grandmother (to
Little Gem) and a widow. And Kermit, Kay’s “alien willy,” even gets to do his
hilarious thing “down there” as Kay’s thoughts keep intruding: “I did take the
chops out of the freezer that time, didn’t I?”
 |
| Marsha Mason. Photo: Carol Rosegg. |
Murphy captures the inner thoughts of her characters with
laser-like detail, expressing in words not only their feelings, but the precise
particulars of everything around them. Even the minutiae of their movements are
carefully limned. Flamboyant vernacular flows like Guinness, as when Lorraine
declares of her visit to the therapist: “This morning, was horsing the mints
out of it all the way up Baggot Street but don’t think it made any difference;
the bang of drink of me was still brutal when I went to see her.” Verbal
nuggets are scattered throughout, like Amber’s disdainful comment when her mom overdresses
for a date with Niall: “You look like Whitney dressed as Britney.”
 |
| Marsha Mason, Lauren O'Reilly, Brenda Meaney. Photo: Carol Rosegg. |
Each actress offers a reality-based, theatrically heightened
performance perfectly suited to the play’s dramatic needs. O’Leary, from
Ireland, has the brash arrogance of the rebellious Amber; the striking Meaney, also from the Emerald
Island, so vivid just recently in the Mint’s The Mountains Look Different,
is even better here; and, most affectingly, Marsha Mason, four-time Oscar
nominee, is back on a New York stage (she recently was associate director of
the Broadway revival of All My Sons). Mason gives her dramatic and comedic all. Her accent may not be as perfect as her costars but she’s
filled with so much vivacity and charm it matters not a whit.
 |
| Marsha Mason, Lauren O'Reilly, Brenda Meaney. Photo: Carol Rosegg. |
Director Borrull—who, by the way, does a fine job in mining
the play’s nuances—points in his notes to the play’s cultural and political
ramifications regarding its feminist positions and how far Ireland has come in
the decade since the play was first written and produced. In particular, he refers to the greater freedom—following the repeal of the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment—a
girl like Amber would enjoy today regarding her reproductive health. While
this, of course, is true, Little Gem is just as effective on a purely
human basis for its depiction of commonly experienced familial concerns.
 |
| Brenda Meaney. Photo: Carol Rosegg. |
Where Little Gem (which played at New York’s Flea
Theatre in 2010) shines less brightly, however, is as drama. The absence of true
interaction and dialogue among its three characters, over an hour and 40
minutes, creates a lack of tension, with a consequent dissipation of dramatic
interest. The occasional emotional or comic eruptions are well enough in and of
themselves but monologues—even divided among three interesting characters, each
played by an outstanding actress—are simply not as theatrically compelling as a
solid plot in which the action is acted out, not reported.
This isn’t to deny that many contemplating a visit to Little Gem
will benefit from considering Lorraine’s advice to Kay: “Do one thing nice for
yourself this week.”
Irish Repertory Theatre
132 W. 22nd St., NYC
Through September 8
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