I’ve
always loved Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens’s talent for writing scores that,
despite bearing the duo’s distinct style, are also beautifully adapted to suit
the musical for which they’re created. Ragtime naturally drips with early 20th-century
verve, Seussical’s whimsy comes
through in every note, and here, A Man of
No Importance superbly immerses the audience in its 1960s Dublin
setting. The Irish flutes, fiddles, and
pipes are gorgeous, and the show they inhabit is every bit as lovely.
Based
on a 1994 film of the same name, A Man of
No Importance follows Alfie Byrne, a middle-aged bus conductor/amateur
theatre director, through the events that shake up his quietly-unlived
life. Alfie is a kind lover of poetry
and stagecraft, a devotee of Oscar Wilde who’s out of place in his insular,
Catholic world. He lives with his sister
Lily, who’s been putting her life on hold waiting for Alfie to get
settled. What she doesn’t know – what no
one knows – is that Alfie has been softly languishing in the closet for
decades. He’s hopelessly in love with
Robbie, the lively, boyish driver of his bus.
When Alfie wants to mount Wilde’s Salome
with his spirited group of dramatists, he starts a maelstrom of controversy
that ultimately threatens the secret he’s guarded most of his life.
Alfie’s
story is excellent – I know coming-out dramas are plentiful, but there’s
something so gentle and reflective about this one. As this “man of no importance” sees his place
in the community threatened by rumors and judgments, as he longs for a “golden
love” to call his own, as he pursues the magic of art in his own small way, you
can’t help but root for him. He’s a
romantic dreamer of a man who’s reached the middle of his life without doing
more than glimpsing at its potential, and his soft self-denial is
heartbreaking. His interactions with
Robbie ring with everything he’s not saying, and “Love Who You Love,” a sweetly
comforting number to a despondent young friend, is a beautiful but bittersweet
declaration – beautiful for its tender assurance, but bittersweet in that Alfie
can’t take his own advice.
Meanwhile,
the amateur dramatics are an utter delight.
The show wonderfully captures the cozy, impassioned, sometimes
ridiculous nature of community theatre, from the aging prima donna to the
overeager bit player. “Art,” which takes
Alfie through the chaos of an average rehearsal, is a hoot, but there’s also
something so genuine and wonderful about it.
Is the theatre troupe very good?
It seems not, but that doesn’t make it any less valid. This collection of demonstrative Dubliners
congregate because they love the stage and the performance of the written
word. They thrill at being in front of
an audience, and they take pride in everything they create together.
I love
the way Wilde himself is incorporated into the show. Alfie quotes him reverently, offers up
historical anecdotes like a total fanboy, and sings “Man in the Mirror,” his
frankest admission of his predicament, to an imagined Wilde as he wishes he
could share Wilde’s boldness and self-assurance. To Alfie, Wilde represents everything life could be, poetry and wit and, most of
all, love, and he makes a fitting symbol to spur our leading everyman to
action.
Warnings
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