LIFFEY PLAYERS ARE LOOKING FOR LOVE OUTSIDE MULLINGAR
Romantic dramas about the last chance for love often can be sweet, sentimental affairs. But when you set your story in the Midlands of Ireland, it adds a moodier element to the tale.
Outside Mullingar is a 2014 Irish play which, according to Charles Isherwood in his review for the New York Times, means the affair, like the weather, will be shrouded in gloom with plenty of talk about lost loves, lost land and lost dreams, with the Grim Reaper lingering in the wings.
Anthony Reilly and Rosemary Muldoon have lived their entire lives on adjacent farms. She has stubbornly been in love with him since childhood, but he always has seemed oblivious to her feelings.
Playwright John Patrick Shanley won an Oscar in 1988 for his screenplay of Moonstruck, which saw Cher and Nicolas Cage playing similar star-crossed lovers in an urban American setting. His characters in Outside Mullingar may be simpler, but they are just as confused and lonely.
Calgarians will have the opportunity to see why Outside Mullingar was nominated for a Tony Award for best new Broadway play of 2014
when Liffey Players presents this charming little valentine to unrequited love at the Pumphouse’s Mitchell Theatre Nov. 9 to 17.
James Noonan, who plays Anthony opposite Tanya Elliott Wolff’s Rosemary, says Outside Mullingar is just about as Irish as a play can get.
“At the centre of the play, there is a lingering land dispute which is so typically Irish. Anthony ’s father Tony had to sell a small portion of his farm to the Muldoons ages ago and they have refused to sell it back and that is a real sore spot with the two families.
“Then there’s the fact that, at age 42, Anthony is still not married,” says Noonan, explaining that “in Tony’s eyes that means his son is never going to have a son to carry on the family name.
“There is a cousin in America named Adam who’s younger, a farmer and the marrying kind. Unless Rosemary and Anthony can sort out their strained relationship it pretty much means Adam is going to get everything.”
As for that Grim Reaper noted above, the play opens after a funeral for Rosemary’s father.
Much to his father’s dismay, Anthony has invited Rosemary and her mother Aoife back to the Reilly farmhouse.
Noonan is quick to stress “you don’t have to be Irish to fall in love with Shanley’s characters and especially the dialogue he gives them. Anthony’s dialogue, in particular, is almost poetic.”
Noonan is relying on his own heritage in portraying the part. His grandfather emigrated from Ireland to Nova Scotia, where most of his extended family still lives. When his grandfather left Ireland they were the O’Noonans, but he dropped the O when he landed in Nova Scotia.
Prior to rehearsing for Liffey’s Outside Mullingar, Noonan directed Strictly Theatre’s production of A Few Good Men, which proved so popular it will be revived for a second run at the Pumphouse’s Joyce Doolittle Theatre in June.
For Outside Mullingar, under the direction of Dorin McIntosh, Noonan and Wolff are joined by Jerry Callaghan as the patriarch Tony Reilly and Sandy Lucas as Rosemary’s mother, Aoife.