Irish playwright Enda Walsh is getting to be a regular in New York. In the past four years, St. Ann’s Warehouse has presented The Walworth Farce, New Electric Ballroom, and Penelope, and now hosts his latest: Misterman, a riveting, if decidedly dark portrait of one man’s disintegration (through December 22, tickets $45-$77).

Recognizable to US audiences as Dr. Jonathan Crane/The Scarecrow from Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, Cillian Murphy makes his stateside stage debut with a knock-your-socks-off performance as Thomas Magill, a pious young man in the small (fictional) town of Innisfree. The cartoonish beginning, as Magill dashes the length of the cavernous performance space in vain attempt to stop a tape player from blasting music, seems a surprising opening for the relatively sober play that follows. But it hints at the unruly nature of the voices Magill hears, and his capacity for violence.

Memory and repetition are prominent themes in Walsh’s plays, and here they manifest themselves in Magill’s obsessive need to replay—literally, via reel-to-reel tapes—the events and conversations of one fateful day. Constantly wearing a portable recording device, Magill restages and repeats his interactions with his neighbors, taking both roles in each conversation. Magill is insufferably judgmental, with more than a touch of missionary zeal, and ends each encounter by scribbling a damning sin about his neighbor in his notebook.

Flipping between Magill and these different characters, Murphy is extraordinary, and sustains a manic energy that is essential in propelling this one-man show forward. It’s often funny, except Magill becomes an increasingly unreliable narrator; his scenes with his “Mammy,” who is represented by a reel player at the head of a table, really ratchet up the demented factor. Without giving away too much, let’s say the ending isn’t surprising, and if anything, its very predictability fulfills the premise that repetition is inevitable.

[For those in the market for Walsh Lite: he has written the book for the musical Once, now playing at New York Theater Workshop and moving to Broadway in 2012.]

Popularity: 2% [?]

Until June 1, 2008, the Dublin based Pan Pan Theatre company will perform Oedipus Loves You at PS122. According to Wikipedia, “a call of pan-pan means there is an emergency on board a boat, ship, aircraft or other vehicle but that, for the time being at least, there is no immediate danger to any one’s life or to the vessel itself. This is referred to as a state of urgency”. Whether or not Aedin Cosgrove and Gavin Quinn were thinking of this definition when they founded Pan Pan in 1991, Oedipus Loves You successfully breathes urgency and immediateness into the familiar story of Oedipus.

Pan Pan’s production follows the traditional form of Greek tragedy: events take place over the arc of a day, all violence happens off stage, characters sometimes wear masks and, most importantly, there is music and dancing. While the plot follows that of Oedipus (by Seneca) and Oedipus Rex (by Sophocles), there is nothing traditionally classical about the characters in Oedipus Loves You. Tiresias, the blind prophet played by Ned Dennehy (who also plays a naked sphinx on platforms for the opening scene of the play), is a retired rock star who wants to play percussion in Antigone’s and Creon’s indie-rock band called “Gordon Is A Mime”. Antigone, smartly played by Aoife Duffin, is a melancholic teenager divided between her love for her family and the deep desire to be left-the-fuck-alone. Uncle Creon (Dylan Tighe) sniffs coke and can hardly contain his own incestuous impulses towards Antigone. Jocasta (Gina Moxley) does not mind the plague at all- in fact, it makes her sleep better. And Oedipus…well, Oedipus can’t even cook meat right for the family barbecue. Played by Bush Moukarzel, Pan Pan’s Oedipus can hardly contain his own self-pity after he gushes his eyes out. In one of the highlights of the performance, his button down shirt completely drenched in blood, Oedipus remembers the lyrics of his own favorite childhood song: Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Freebird. He actually breaks down and cries after singing a few of the first verses.

Playing off of Freud’s writings as well as on contemporary notions of postdramatic theater, Pan Pan’s Oedipus Loves You brings wit and a healthy amount of distance to the theatrical Oedipal “super-plot”. The production is defined by a subtle dark humor that allows for the heavy tragic elements of the plot to exist in tandem with the lightness of irony and detachment. The production is also interesting in terms of set, light and sound design, all of which support the notion of a theater conscious of its theatricality yet fully entertaining, (a)live, and aware of its audience. If you have not seen it yet, don’t miss it!

Pan Pan Theatre’s

Oedipus Loves You

May 21 – June 1

Wednesdays – Sundays at 8

Saturdays at 8 and 11

Tickets from $20

$15 (students/seniors)

$10 (P.S. 122 members)

Popularity: 1% [?]