Same day, different journey in Ronán Noone’s ‘Thirst’
Time has not been kind to some of Eugene O’Neill’s plays.
But the autobiographical “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” published only after the playwright’s death per his directive, still stands as an unassailable masterpiece, its portrait of the despairwracked Tyrones still wrenching when it’s done well.
For Boston-based dramatist Ronán Noone, “Long Day’s Journey” presented an opportunity to move the action from upstairs to downstairs and tell a related but wholly different story.
In “Thirst,” now at Lyric Stage Company of Boston under the direction of Courtney O’Connor, Noone explores the struggles of three Tyrone family employees — Cathleen, the maid; Bridget, the cook and Cathleen’s aunt; and Jack, the chauffeur — as well as, more broadly, the Irish immigrant experience. (Something about which Noone, a Galway native, has firsthand knowledge.)
“Thirst” is a probing and finely wrought if sometimes overly slowpaced drama. Its shift in perspective, from haves to have-nots, underscores the self-absorption and self-indulgence of the Tyrones, giving the play something of a political edge.
A revised version of Noone’s “The Second Girl,” presented by The Huntington in 2015, “Thirst” is largely devoid of the fireworks that characterized the early, explosive plays that made Noone’s reputation, such as “Little Black Dress,” “The Atheist,” and “The Blowin of Baile Gall.”
Noone, who teaches in Boston University’s MFA playwriting program, has chosen to work in a more muted key, rendering “Thirst” as essentially a character study, in which the key battles are mostly interior. Bridget (Aimee Doherty), Jack (Michael Kaye), and Cathleen (Kate Fitzgerald) each have a lifechanging decision to make, and there is an element of risk attached to those decisions.
“Thirst” unfolds over the course of the same day in August 1912 chronicled in “Long Day’s Journey," at the seaside Connecticut home of the Tyrone family.
Unseen but heard often enough to make their presence felt, they are: father James, an actor who squandered his gifts on a money-making role that he played over and over again; mother Mary, addicted to morphine in part because of her husband’s stinginess; older son Jamie, who has pretty much given up on life; and son Edmund, whose worrisome cough, often audible through the walls, suggests he is suffering from tuberculosis.
It’s suggested the Tyrones are not the most benevolent of employers. The view of the Tyrones held by their employees is a mixture of pity and eye-rolling scorn, reflected in Bridget’s caustic remark: “I’d love to tell them unfortunates in there what I know. But what would that make me? Them thinking I think I’m better than them. Which I am by the way."
On a period-specific set by ace designer Janie E. Howland, who always seems to know how much or how little is needed to create the right environment for a Lyric Stage production, “Thirst” lingers over the details of Bridget’s job in particular.
We see the many logistical steps that go into preparing meals for the Tyrones, Bridget’s low-paid toil providing a stark contrast with the leisured angst of her employers. “We’re immigrants," Bridget says at one point. “Being taken advantage of is our middle feckin name."
The careworn, embittered Bridget, who has been in America for 16 years, is a type Doherty has not often played during her sterling career on Boston stages. Doherty ably conveys the worldweariness of a woman who has made sacrifices and experienced losses that are made more painful by the fact that they go unrecognized by her family.
Cathleen, Bridget’s young niece, is a bundle of energy and ambition. Her fiancé is back in Ireland, and she is newly arrived in America after surviving the sinking of the Titanic — a traumatic experience that “Thirst” should delve into more than it does. Her goal is to be an actress, and James Tyrone has been giving her acting lessons. Fitzgerald deftly shades Cathleen’s exuberance with an I’m-meant-for-bigger-things defiance.
As for Jack, he is eager to move to Ohio and start his own rental-car business — an aspiration complicated by the fact that he wants Bridget to accompany him and she seems implacably opposed to that. Kaye’s incisive portrayal gives us a clear sense of the conflicting impulses Jack is wrestling with.
The question undergirding “Thirst” is: Will Bridget, Jack, and Cathleen — unlike the emotionally immobilized Tyrones — find the inner resources to change their circumstances?
O’Neill offers nary a glimmer of hope for the Tyrones, but Noone furnishes at least some reason to believe that for his trio, it will be a long day’s journey into light.