Devil May Care.('The Seafarer' and 'Is He Dead?')(Theater review)

"I'm Irish. We think sideways," the professional zany Spike Milligan said. "The Seafarer" (splendidly written and directed by Conor McPherson, at the Booth) is proof of Milligan's point. The play opens in darkness and ends in brightness. It begins on Christmas Eve, as its hero, the strapping and saturnine Sharky Harkin (David Morse), in his upstairs hallway, taps an electric-red votive candle that has gone out, beneath a picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (the image presides unobtrusively over the play), then descends to his living room to survey the debris of the previous night's heavy drinking. On the surface, this slovenly male household on the outskirts of Dublin is ...