Theatre in Review: The Freedom of the City (Irish Repertory Theatre)

	Christa Scott Reed. Photo: Carol Rosegg

Those of you who think of Brian Friel as the Irish Chekhov -- all broken hearts and missed opportunities among the peat bogs -- will get a shock from The Freedom of the City. This 1973 drama, inspired in part by the events of Bloody Sunday, in which unarmed peace marchers in Derry, Ireland were gunned down by British soldiers -- who were later vindicated by an official government commission -- combines the author's usual stoic compassion for his characters with a carefully controlled rage. It's about the slaughter of innocents and how their deaths are used to advance any number of agendas.

Three strangers -- attendees at a peace march that has turned into a riot, complete with soldiers and tear gas -- stumble into a building in order to escape the melee. They are surprised to discover that they are in the mayor's parlor in the city's guildhall. Michael is an earnest, young, unemployed clerk who dreams of a decent job and a place to live for him and his fianceé. Lily is a middle-aged housewife with 11 children and a sickly husband known as "the chairman." Skinner moves from place to place and job to job, living for the next drink and the next bet, regarding the world with a coldly skeptical eye. All three are doomed; Friel makes it clear in the play's opening seconds that they will be shot down, the victims of false reports that a cadre of terrorists have taken over the building.

The action shifts between the trio in the guildhall and a variety of after-the-fact commentators. A priest, celebrating a funeral Mass, warns that the republican movement is being infiltrated by Communists. A judge presides over an investigation into the deaths, subtly steering any hint of responsibility away from the British army. A balladeer memorializes them as fallen revolutionary soldiers, while a television news reporter dresses them up in the clichés of her trade. From time to time, an American academic holds forth on "the culture of poverty," which perpetuates itself from generation to generation.

A hostage situation would seem to be a naturally dramatic situation, but Friel isn't really interested in melodrama or suspense. We already know the characters' fate, and Friel is at pains to make clear that they aren't particularly committed to politics. The idealistic Michael worries that the civil rights movement is being weakened by "hooligan elements," but Lily attends marches because her friends and neighbors do it, and Skinner, who takes no sides, simply tends to gravitate to wherever the action is. They spend their time in the mayor's parlor helping themselves liberally to the contents of his cocktail closet, donning ceremonial robes, and trading quips and bits of song. When Skinner thrusts a sword into an official portrait on the wall, it's more a reflection of his free-floating rage than any political statement. Michael, who is deeply impressed by the room's plush furnishings and air of privilege, repeatedly urges them to leave, but they are surrounded, and, by the end, one sees that escape was never an option.

That Michael, Lily, and Skinner are not terribly well drawn or interesting characters is a problem that plagues The Freedom of the City; they are the center of the drama and its weakest aspect. (This may have been why it was such a fast flop in its original Broadway production.) Despite some incisive work from James Russell (Michael), Cara Seymour (Lily), and Joseph Sikora (Skinner), they don't fully come to life; in Ciáran O'Reilly's otherwise sure-handed staging, none of them convey any sense of disorientation at having escaped a riot or any unease at have trespassed into a forbidden place -- "the holy of holies," in Skinner's sardonic words. Even more oddly, they don't seem to fully grasp the danger into which they have fallen.

Also, because The Freedom of the City is without any real rising action -- it is a situation amplified by commentary from a battery of outsiders, all of whom fail to understand exactly what has happened -- its flow is hampered by the insertion of an intermission, which makes it seem dramatically lopsided. Without a break, it would run about an hour and 45 minutes; for once, I think an author's directions could profitably be ignored.

Still, Friel's language, as always, makes its own beautiful music. There's Lily's sherry-spiked admission that she is the mother of "eight boys and three girls. And they come like a pattern on wallpaper: Two boys, a girl, two boys, a girl, two boys." There's also her pungent description of life at home with "the chairman's sitting at the fire like a wee thin saint with his finger in his mouth and the comics up to his nose and hoping to God I'll remember to bring him home five fags." Or Skinner's succinct précis of his existential dilemma: "If I'm sick the entire authority of the health authority is at my service. And should I die the welfare people would bury me in style. It's only when I'm alive and well that I'm a problem."

And it's fascinating to see representatives of church, state, and media as the try to appropriate this tragic event, interpreting it in the light of their own objectives. O'Reilly's crisply paced, often powerfully acted staging turns the entire theatre into a crime scene, with soldiers patrolling the auditorium armed with guns, and the sounds of rioting, gunfire, and helicopters overhead plunging us into the center of the action. (The excellent sound design is by M. Florian Staab.) Charlie Corcoran's setting places the mayor's parlor - dominated by an elaborate stained glass window and an enormous desk -- at stage center while carving out plenty of room for sermons, court testimonies, and television reports. Michael Gottlieb's meticulously detailed light proves invaluable in carving out different playing areas as needed. David Toser's costumes have an accurate period feel and are appropriate to each character.

The Freedom of the City is never going to be considered one of Friel's finest works -- it doesn't play to his considerable strengths as a playwright -- but it constitutes a fascinating sidebar in his career. If nothing else, it reveals that there's much more to this fine playwright than most of us know.--David Barbour