Theatre in Review: Temporal Powers (Mint Theatre Company)

"Did j'ever at all dream of bein' rich?" The question is put by Min Donovan, a remarkably tough-minded young Irishwoman, to her husband, Michael. His response is silent, so she bitterly adds, "No! You did not. Contented you'd be as long as you could tire yourself!" He offers a feeble defense, saying, "I'd ask no better, now or ever, than to live out me life where we were." "That is what has us evicted this day," she replies, going for the jugular.

This is the bleak, almost Beckettian opening of Temporal Powers : a rustic couple recently made homeless, holed up in the ruin of a stone cottage, paralyzed by rage and disappointment. Min, a hard-headed type in every other respect, dreams of a husband "that would stand behind a shop counter quiet and easy the day long, and could be smoking his pipe in the evening if he'd like, and myself, as was meant, ornamenting the house." But the feckless, deathly quiet Michael, stunned into inaction by his recent losses, is so obviously not that man, Min's hopes seem both desperate and a little daft. It's a slightly puzzling bit of exposition; the lights come up on what looks like the end of the line, and it's hard to imagine where Min and Michael will go from here.

Then Michael makes a surprising discovery -- a substantial packet of cash holed away in one of the cottage's tumbledown walls-- and, suddenly, a whole new life looms for them. Or does it? Michael, his conscience troubled by this tempting object, resists, suggesting that poverty must be their ordained lot. "Oh, you're a wonder for the reading of God's mind," she replies with scalding contempt. To Min, possession is all, and the cash is the ticket to a new life that doesn't involve scrambling for survival. The standoff between them turns even more embattled as it becomes evident that the money was stolen from the local post office by Ned Cooney, Michael's ex-con brother-in-law.

Of all the lost names unearthed by the Mint Theatre Company, surely the most significant has been the rediscovery of the Irish playwright Teresa Deevy. Once a bright light of the Abbey Theatre, she was allowed to drift into obscurity; it's only one of the many extraordinary facts of her career that a writer with such an acute ear for dialogue should have been deaf since the age of 20. But Temporal Powers is filled with words that are both richly poetic and cruelly pointed, especially when Min is dealing with a world of (as she sees it) useless or troublesome men. Facing an interloper on the other side of a low fence, she says, "Put your leg over that, and I'll raise the dead"-- and you don't doubt for a second that she could do just that.

And the situation Deevy has created is a cunning one; indeed, she makes a strong argument that the discovery of the money is a disaster for Michael. If he bows to Min's wishes, he betrays his conscience; if he returns the money, he is turning in Ned, too, and bringing misery down on his sister Maggie, Ned's wife. Meanwhile, Ned wants the money back any way he can get it, even if he has to make an alliance with Min.

For all its attractions, Temporal Powers isn't as accomplished a work as Wife to James Whelan, presented by the Mint a year ago. For one thing, Deevy's treatment of the country dialect, as alluring as it often sounds, makes for dialogue that often comes across as foreign to modern American ears; one listens intently while noting with dismay that certain nuances are being lost. For another, she focuses so much on the present tense that she skimps on the details of Michael and Min's marriage, leaving us with little sense of they have come to this bleak pass. And her attempts at injecting a robust dose of rural comedy-- largely via the character of Daisy Barron, who treats the sorrows of others as a form of entertainment, and her fed-up son, Moses, who has relationship problems of his own -- aren't entirely successful. Each element of the play -- stark drama, black comedy, passages of poetic longing -- is drawn persuasively on its own terms, but Deevy wasn't able to fuse them into a totally coherent whole.

Still, without having anyone raise his or her voice, the author works up a considerable amount of tension, especially in Act II, when you begin to wonder, uneasily, just how far Min will go to hang onto the money. The play's denouement feels brutally true to her disaffected characters. And, under Jonathan Bank's sure-handed direction, the entire company delivers, especially Rosie Benton is a powerful presence as Min, her mouth pulled back in a thin line of disapproval, her arms wrapped protectively around her torso, and her gaze aimed steadily at a world of fools and criminals. Equally fine is Aidan Redmond as Michael, whose eerily quiet manner leaves you guessing whether he is a weakling or ready to explode with anger. Bairbre Dowling is a fine tragic figure as Maggie, who makes do with a spectacularly bad marriage, and Con Horgan brings a chill in the air with him with each of Ned's appearances. Fiana Tobin is dryly amusing as Daisy. ("Some suffers terrible; often I comforts meself with that thought," she says, before picking over the sorrows of her neighbors with the eye of a true connoisseur.) Eli James is also solid as the skeptical Moses, who grouses, "I dunno how would we pass the time if we hadn't the sorrowing to do." Wrenn Schmidt is a charmer as the lass who pursues Moses with such vigor-- and who commits a startling act of betrayal to obtain the money for their marriage.

Vicki R. Davis' set design takes Deevy at her word, creating a warren of crumbling walls and broken arches that instantly communicates the desperate nature of Min and Michael's circumstances The rest of the design credits -- lighting by Jeff Nellis, costumes by Andrea Varga, and sound by Jane Shaw -- are equally accomplished.

Most of all, Temporal Powers provides more evidence that Deevy was a writer with a penetrating vision of her characters, their souls eroded by poverty, struggling to get by in a landscape barren of love or tenderness. It's an uncompromising vision for any time or place; for a woman writer in the 1930s, it's pretty astonishing. (She makes such a supposedly tough cookie as Lillian Hellman look like Louisa May Alcott, and she does it without any melodramatics.) The Mint has plans to produce another Deevy play next season; I can't wait.--David Barbour