Christmas Spirit, Distilled & Bottled: Scena's Dublin Carol
Annie Grier and Matt Dougherty in Scena's production of Conor McPherson's Dublin Carol.
From the start of the play, when John and his new assistant, Mark (a fire-maned Joe Baker) return from conducting a Christmas Eve morning service, it seems as if John is always concerned about getting a kettle on the hotplate for tea, yet nothing ever ends up in his glass but whiskey; he polishes off at least a fifth in the eight hours of time the play depicts, amid claims that he used to be much worse.
"Worse" is hard to imagine, given that he starts the play hung over and is already back in the bottle well before noon, but his daughter Mary (Annie Grier) provides the evidence in the play's second part. The first scene is filled with John reminiscing to his new charge about his glory days — all the while, Mark trying delicately and desperately to extricate himself from his boss's nostalgia trip, until he seizes on a moment to turn the conversation from tales of drunken carousing to accounts of gruesome on-the-job cadavers. But after Mark leaves, Mary shows up, estranged from her father for a decade, to reveal that her mother, his wife, is dying of cancer. She's come to retrieve him to pay his final respects, but her visit turns into a litany of the offenses of gross negligence and endangerment he committed against his family in his truly wild years. He's rationalized all this away by treating family and love as a burden. "A woman's love can be terribly constant," he laments to Mark at one point. "It can last for years."
McPherson's script is structured quite simply, and Scena adds few frills. Too few at the start: the first scene is dominated by John's lengthy monologues about the past, and while it excellently evokes some of the same exasperation evidenced in Mark's face, the static staging and rambling stories begin to get a bit tedious. As the tension mounts (and the drinks begin showing obvious effects), things pick up considerably.
The excellent set tells a story on its own: it is as cluttered and run down a funeral home office as one can imagine, and when John references the shabby Christmas decorations as being for the benefit of customers, you instantly feel sorry for any of the bereaved who must pass through this space.
Dougherty's portrayal of John is full of wonderful nuance. In his scene with Mary, she nearly begins to cry at one point, and he begins absently searching his pockets, presumably for a handkerchief. It's not a showy gesture, subtle enough that one might even miss it. But his deft physicality in the moment underlines the sad statement on his character, an undertaker who can't even produce a handkerchief for a crying woman.
The actors are given responsibility for giving life to more than just their own characters as well. While only the three of them are ever on stage, there are frequent references to people who never appear, characters who are just as important to the story. There's John's dying wife Helen. Noel, the funeral home owner and John's mentor, who is also in the hospital for unexplained tests. And John's absent son Paul, who Mary tells him is becoming more and more like him. When John asks how, she pointedly references the "way he stands at the bar". Alcoholism spreads like a disease between Irish men in this world.
Though none of these people are ever on stage, they hang heavy over the proceedings. None of them are yet dead, but their ghostly presence can be felt, a credit to both the playwright's words and the actors' abilities to craft these invisible beings out of thin air. Does John, awash in guilt and whiskey, and lost amid these ghosts of Christmas past and present, deserve the chance at some small redemption? He's even less certain of the answer to that question than the audience.
Dublin Carol runs through September 20 at the H Street Playhouse. Tickets are available online.