Men at Work.(comedic drama 'The Weir')(Theater review)

For the male characters in "The Weir," Conor McPherson's 1997 comedic drama, the spirit world is readily accessible, especially after the consumption of spirits. In a tavern in rural Ireland, a young barman serves lager and whiskey to three down-on-their-luck working-class locals. Jack, the oldest of the men, has never really had any kind of companion, while Jim, his fortyish friend, still lives with his mother. That leaves Finbar, who has made it both with the ladies and as a landowner, but neither success seems to have calmed his barely acknowledged anxiety. Finbar is energized by booze--he orders drink after drink and talks and talks. Still, "alcoholism" is not a word that any of these men would use. Drinking puts hair on your chest and a tale on your tongue. And McPherson finds music in their discussion of it: "Ah. Pint. Why not, says you, ha?" "Keep the chill out, ha?"

As an examination of Ireland's drinking and storytelling culture, "The Weir" couldn't be better, structurally speaking: the men's funny banter acts as a bridge between long monologues. To impress Valerie, a friend of Finbar's (amusingly, she orders a glass of white wine at the bar, thus establishing her sexual and social difference from the lads), the boys each tell a story of the supernatural, evoking portions of Yeats's "A Vision" or the more mystical elements in Isak Dinesen's "Seven Gothic Tales." But when Valerie reveals the real-life circumstances of her grief--her only child died in a swimming accident--fact trumps fiction and silences these depressed fabulists. McPherson is following in the dramaturgical footsteps of the Irish-American Eugene O'Neill here. In "The Iceman Cometh," as in "The Weir," a bunch of barflies watch their pipe dreams go up in smoke as they're exposed to the air of truth.

McPherson was born in Dublin in 1971. As an undergraduate at University College, Dublin, he studied English and philosophy and dabbled in theatre. His first plays were later performed around Dublin, and concentrated on the dramatic monologue. "I love the intimacy of somebody just confiding directly with you," he once said. Monologues can be tricky, though. When they are masterly--as in the "Homebody" section of Tony Kushner's 2001 play, "Homebody/Kabul," for instance--it is the result of the writer's ability to do two things at once. First, he must not let the character engage in the kind of navel-gazing that excludes the rest of the world--he must provide a political point of view for us to hold on to or disagree with. Second, he has to round out the monologue with enough self-critical humor that the speaker doesn't immediately alienate the audience. When I first saw McPherson's work--his 2000 melodrama, "Dublin Carol"--I failed to understand how germane the structure of his plays was to being Irish, Catholic, and male. I got a better glimpse of those undercurrents in "Shining City" (2004), the story of a closeted gay shrink and his patient who is haunted by his dead wife's ghost. With "Port Authority" (at the Atlantic Theatre Company, under the direction of Henry Wishcamper), McPherson's ambition has become even clearer. He wants to tell stories that are metaphysical in scope. He wants to explore how much the Irish soul can bear in its native land, where alcohol blunts the senses and religion ruins lives.

The set, designed by Takeshi Kata, is simple: a long, high-backed bench in an eerily empty bus station. Three passengers are waiting, seemingly unattached. First up is Kevin (John Gallagher, Jr.), the youngest of the trio, then the middle-aged Dermot (Brian d'Arcy James), followed by Joe (Jim Norton), who lives in an old-age home. At the start of the play, Kevin addresses the audience, telling us that he has left home and is moving into a house with three roommates, one of whom is in a band. But the roommate that Kevin can't wait to live with is Clare, who is not only the object of his desire but a conduit ...