Rex Daugherty thinks that the fact that he memorized 9,000 lines of rhyme is the least interesting part of Solas Nua’s upcoming production of The Smuggler. “What’s the most mundane thing you do at work?” he jokes.
But Daugherty, the artistic director of Solas Nua and the star of this one-man show, is willing to do the hours of repetition if it means embodying Tim Finnegan, the struggling Irish immigrant at the center of The Smuggler, by playwright Ronán Noone.
Daugherty describes the play as “a rhyming roast of our expectations of America. What I loved about it is the character of Tim. He does it with flair, with a wink in his eye.”
Addressing the audience from behind a bar on the island of Amity in wealthy Martha’s Vineyard, Finnegan dreams of being a writer but struggles in a society in which the beach-going upper class pretends that ‘the help’ doesn’t exist. Finnegan eventually slides into an illegal underworld, and the play becomes a kind of confessional, with the actor confiding in the audience through rhythmic slant rhyme.
The performance will be held in Allegory, an intimate cocktail bar tucked away behind the Radical Library on the first floor of the Eaton DC hotel on 12th and K Northwest. Eaton DC, which also includes a recording space, movie theater, and dining area, opened in fall 2018 as “a radical hospitality brand,” as Eaton’s Director of Culture Sheldon Scott put it.
In Allegory, the experience of seeing a play in a 30-seat bar will be made all the more realistic with Daugherty serving up custom cocktails. Audience members will have a chance to order a drink from a larger menu before the show, and a select few can get one of Finnegan’s concoctions as he’s weaving his beat poem tale. The choices during the performance include the classic honey-lemon-gin drink Bee’s Knees or an Irish Tipperary, made with Irish whiskey and sweet vermouth. (First come, first serve!)
Allegory itself is windowless and strikingly muraled by D.C.-based artist Erik Thor-Sandberg, who painted the walls with a tribute to Ruby Bridges, the first African American child to desegregate William Frantz Elementary School in Louisiana in 1960. The murals depict Bridges as a reimagined Alice in Wonderland entering the unknown.
“It has an aesthetic, but it also has a story,” says Scott of the space. “People don’t go out for a drink expecting to learn about institutional racism, but here you have it.”
Though the connection between the visual of Bridges transforming into a dragon slayer and The Smuggler’s themes of dislocation and code-switching is slight, Allegory is a stunning setting for a play—cozy in its dimensions but expansive in the magical realism of its art.
Daugherty first found the space as a patron, and it immediately caught his eye as more than just a fun place to have a cocktail. He had seen The Smuggler in New York at Origin Theatre Company’s first Irish Theater Festival and thought, why not stage it in an actual bar? Specifically, in Allegory, where the placement within Eaton DC—a hotel aiming to be a hub for artists and activists—could serve as a platform for conversation about the issues the play surfaces.
This is Solas Nua’s 10th production staged in a non-traditional theater space. They’ve done shows in private residencies and in the Georgetown swimming pool, and in 2018 they won a Helen Hayes Award Recommendation for The Frederick Douglass Project, which was staged on a pier in the Anacostia River overlooking Douglass’s historic home. And this isn’t the first time a D.C. food or drink space has transformed into a stage: Local company TBD Immersive staged an “immersive culinary pop up” at now-closed Slim’s Diner in Petworth last fall.
The Smuggler Director Laley Lippard wasn’t fazed by the challenge of producing a show in a 30-seat cocktail bar: She’s directed live theater set on rooftops, in kitchen, and even bathrooms.
“There is an egalitarianism to a bar,” she says. “You’re only as good as your story.”
Sitting in Allegory, seeing The Smuggler will feel “almost as intimate as film”—though of course without that extra barrier of the screen. In wrangling the script onto the stage, Lippard played with the balance of direct address to the audience and having Finnegan get lost in his own storytelling. “When does Rex live in a moment, and when does he come out of it?” she asks.
In addition to what’s happening in his head, Lippard and Daugherty also have to choreograph the work happening at the bar, and make Rex’s role as jaded bartender feel lived-in.
“Making drinks while doing a performance is its own performance,” says Daugherty. “It’s quite the ballet.”
The Smuggler runs at Allegory through Sept. 24. Tickets $40. The runtime is 70 minutes. Select performances will be followed by discussions featuring guests working on immigration issues in D.C.
