Was it really more than 30 years ago when the lights in the Vivian Beaumont Theatre in New York dimmed for the first night of Brian Friel's Lovers? Hilton Edwards, the director, was there and his partner, Micheal MacLiammoir, waved across the dimming auditorium to wish him well.
And then Art Carney was narrating dispassionately the facts of a summer end-of-school day when Joe Brennan and pregnant Maggie Enright went off up a hill outside the town to do some revision for their forthcoming exams and talk about their imminent marriage.
It was a wonderful night and this reviewer hasn't seen a professional production of the play since then.
The revived staging by Big Telly, which opened last night as part of the current Brian Friel Festival, could not have been expected to carry the resonances of that evening but Zoe Seaton's direction might have caught more of the tragic ironies of the first piece (ironically titled "Winners" by the author) and of the darkness of the chaotically comic second piece (called "Losers") about late starters Andy and Hanna courting and marrying beneath the dark tyranny of her mother's invalid devotions to St Philomena.
Andy Seaton's functional utilitarian settings do little to help the atmosphere either of the burgeoning love of the young kids setting out on their brief life or of the withering love of the older folk trapped in what looks like it may be a very long life.
In the first play, Richard Clements and Eimear Hughes as the two teenagers chatter most energetically and affectingly of what it is to be on threshold of adult life, but John Hewitt and Susie Kelly are that bit too dispassionate as they narrate what happens when Joe and Maggie take that rowing boat out on to Lake Gorm. They need to be more aware of the dramatic counterpoint they must provide to the young lovers' optimism.
In the second piece, Hewitt comes more into his own comic talents as he plots vengeance on his mother-in-law and her plaster saint and then drunkenly bungles the effort. But Kelly's performance as Hanna is too measured and too consciously mannered.
But, as the well-dressed young theatre-goer sitting in front of me that night in the Vivian Beaumont all those years ago said as the lights dimmed for "Losers" to start, "this is the one we can laugh at" referring to the New York Times review of the original staging at the Gate in Dublin. We can still laugh. In Tallaght until Saturday; booking (01) 4627477. Next week in Armagh and Mullingar, then to Newtownabbey, Larne, Portlaoise and Portadown. Opening on May 31st in Andrews Lane Theatre, Dublin.
