Playwright: Tom Murphy. At: Strawdog Theatre, 3829 N. Broadway St. Tickets: 866-8111-4111; www.strawdog.org; $22-$59. Runs through: Sept. 28
Irish playwright Tom Murphy is a contemporary of Brian Friel, but he lacks Friel's name-recognition and international standing. So it's nice that Strawdog Theatre is giving the neglected Murphy some exposure by producing his drama Conversations on a Homecoming, though its bleakness isn't really something that will warm the heart.
Set in the 1970s in an Irish pub on the outskirts of Galway, Conversations focuses on a group of friends gathering on a wintery night to welcome the handsome, if aging, actor Michael (Adam Soule) back from America after a 10 year absence.
Michael and his pals were once inspired by the optimism of the early 1960s (especially when John F. Kennedy became the American president) and the unseen character of J.J. who became a force in pushing them to pursue artistic careers. But now in the 1970s, what greets Michael is a bracing shock of Catholic conservatism from his acquaintance Liam (Ed Porter) and plenty of disillusionment and angry resentment from his best friend Tom (Michael Dailey) and his longtime girlfriend Peggy (Anita Deely). A friend nicknamed Junior (Jeff Duhigg) seems perfectly content to being a new family man, while the young barmaid Anne (Elee Schrock, filling in for an indisposed Emily Nichelson last-minute on opening night) hovers in the background hoping for something grander in life.
Murphy symbolically telegraphs the lopped-off dreams of his unhappy characters by stressing the built-in partition that has closed off part of the bar run by the slow-paced bar matron known as Missus (an always enjoyable Janice O'Neill who pops in from time to time). This physical wall confronts Michael throughout the play as he tries to rally his friends to remember their idealistic youth when they gathered in the open space of the bar in the 1960s, only to have Tom to shoot down those happy memories by filling in the facts of economic desperation that put a stop to those artistic ambitions.
Director John Berry works well with his ensemble, who must all gauge their performances and outbursts based upon the amount of liquor the characters imbibe throughout the show. There are strong, idiosyncratic performances throughout, particularly Dailey's embittered and increasingly inebriated Tom who makes it his duty to make Michael see the betrayal of their built-up hopes and the drudgery of their current lives.
As the Strawdog production progresses (there is no intermission), don't be surprised if you start to feel just as trapped and cooped up as the characters in scenic designer Mike Mroch's rundown pub set. Younger audiences might read the play's overwhelming pessimism as a warning to try and actively change the future course of their lives, while older audiences with unfulfilled artistic ambitions might find that the material hits too uncomfortably close to home. Either way, Conversations on a Homecoming is definitely a bitter pill to swallow with its harshly realistic outlook at middle-aged people facing down an the inevitable slow decline of their lives.