A Man of No Importance (2002)

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 20^th-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

Language, sexual content, some drinking, and thematic elements.