Fringe Festival: Irish Authors Held Hostage
Everyone has those favorite records that simply demand to be listened to from start to finish, where almost every song is fantastic, each one an individual slice of near perfection that works even better within the whole of the album. John Morogiello's Irish Authors Held Hostage is the dramatic equivalent.
Morogiello takes a concept that would be wholly appropriate fodder for an excellently surreal Monty Python routine: Irish authors from throughout the 19th and 20th centuries being taken captive by modern terrorist archetypes, and instead of just writing one great sketch on the theme, presents twelve distinct variations. Most of the variations concentrate on a single author, with some crossover among the terrorists, particularly the Muslim Fundamentalists, who recur throughout a number of scenes, each time growing more confused by the exceedingly odd collection of Irish authors. Other terrorist groups represented include Basque separatists, Somali pirates, Colombian drug runners, and, of course, the IRA.
But the real stars are the authors themselves, a parade of writers, most portrayed by Morogiello himself, each distilled to concise and hilarious caricature. There's Oscar Wilde (flamboyant and sex-crazed), James Joyce (reserved, alcoholic, and often incomprehensible), George Bernard Shaw (obsessed with the dramatic underpinnings of his own scene, and a relentless self-promoter), just for a start. Even lesser known writers like John Millington Synge and Brendan Behan are given laugh-out-loud turns that don't depend on any pre-knowledge of the writers' work, credit to the Morogiello's knack for quick characterization.
Like even the best pop album, there are a couple of weaker songs in the mix, in this case a throwaway scene with Bram Stoker, who appears as Dracula, a quick and too-easy nod to the fact that no one ever knows much about the author beyond his creation anyway. And an overly cartoonish read on a Somali pirate threatens to derail an otherwise hilarious scene with the memoir-obsessed McCourt brothers. But these aside, scenes continue to get stronger and stronger as we near the end, with an appropriately absurd lambasting of Samuel Beckett, a drunken Behan mocking Americans for their attachment to ersatz Irish culture, and a final appearance by the recurring character of W.B. Yeats, portrayed here to uproarious effect as a whiny, plagiarizing attention whore. By the time you quit laughing after the spot-on Python tribute of the final two lines, just like that favorite album, you'll want to flip it back over and see the whole thing again.
Irish Authors Held Hostage has two more performances, July 25 and 26. Schedule and ticket information is available here.