Theatre in Review: Sea Marks (Irish Repertory Theatre)Sea Marks is a love story in which the words matter more than the people. Gardner McKay's two-hander, which had a brief Off Broadway run in 1981, starts out as an epistolary drama, a literary romance rather than a physical one. Colm, a middle-aged fisherman living on a remote island off the western coast of Ireland, decides to take his first-ever shot at courtship, sending a letter to Timothea, a young woman he met in passing more than a year earlier at a local wedding. Timothea, who lives in Liverpool and works in book publishing, doesn't really remember Colm, but she is taken with his mellifluous writing style, and she encourages him to write again. The play is set in 1966-68, so the only way they have of communication is via long, leisurely missives; soon they are regular correspondents. Timothea has an eye for talent; Colm is a natural poet, his descriptions of his solitary life on the island both precisely rendered and vividly imagined. She even hints around that others might enjoy his prose, a suggestion he doesn't take seriously. They finally meet when she returns to the island for another wedding, and their attraction is palpable -- but what are the chances that this rough-hewn islander and a citified, much younger career girl will find a life that suits them both? This experiment in romance reaches its critical moment when Colm visits Liverpool; standing before the bed from which Timothea beckons, he warns her that "what you see before you is a 45-year-old spinster man," adding that he has "had no previous schooling in the task we are about to perform." She silences him with a kiss. This is all very touching and amusing; it is delightful to see Colm blossom, thanks to the experience of feelings that are entirely new to him. However, the action takes a sharp turn in the direction of implausibility when Timothea announces that she has edited excerpts from Colm's letters into a book of poems called Sea Sonnets, which is about to be published. She has it all planned out: Colm will stay in Liverpoool with her. She will pursue her career (which will have gotten a considerable boost from the discovery of Colm). And he will continue to write, becoming the next Dylan Thomas. It's at this point that you begin to notice that Sea Marks raises more questions than it answers. McKay doesn't really delve into Colm's past, so we have little understanding of how he has lived so long without a woman and why he decides to take a flyer on Timothea. One wonders if Colm might not feel betrayed when Timothea advances her career by reshaping and publishing his private communications to her; the play never stops to wonder if Timothea isn't taking advantage of Colm, who, having been starved for the love of a woman, might not want to hold onto her at all costs. Instead, McKay is largely content to present Colm as a comic fish out of water -- when Timothea lights an incense stick before bedtime, he grouses, "It smells like a Catholic church in here" -- and when strains appear in the relationship one doesn't feel that Colm is facing a terrible choice between the woman he loves and the way of life he might love more. Somewhere deep inside Sea Marks is the story of a lonely man who discovers that the price of love may be too high, but, at least in Ciarán O'Reilly's production, everyone seems to be edging away from the starker, more heartbreaking realities implied by this situation. What keeps Sea Marks watchable is the playwright's way with words. Timothea, who grew up on a farm in Wales and has no intention of ever going back, has a quietly stunning monologue in which she describes her first sexual experience, with a farmhand, just after the birth of a calf. Colm has an equally fine speech when, forced by Timothea to appear at a book reading just after receiving the devastating news that his fishing partner (and father figure) has died, he lays his copy of Sea Sonnets aside to describe the grim realities of fishing in the treacherous waters of the North Atlantic. But the arias McKay has given them tend to come across as set pieces, little showstoppers that don't always illuminate the characters or move the action forward. As Colm, Patrick Fitzgerald speaks eloquently, getting every drop of meaning out of the arias with which he has been provided. He also neatly conveys his nervousness in the face of sexual experiences that are entirely new and a little bit frightening. He also amuses when he is identified by a literary critic as "a primitive," a categorization that clearly rankles. Xanthe Elbrick captures Timothea's growing fascination with Colm's letters; she also makes clear how living in a big city constitutes a kind of rebirth for her. But somehow their affair never really matters as much as it might. If this is Colm's one chance at love, shouldn't he more desperate, more conflicted? If Timothea has linked her career to Colm's writing, shouldn't she try harder to hold onto him? The action, which moves between Liverpool and Colm's island, is neatly contained on Charlie Corcoran's turntable set, which is lit by Michael Gottlieb with his usual sensitivity and attention to detail. Leon Dobkowski's costumes include some sleek-looking late-'60s frocks for Timothea. M. Florian Staab's sound design evokes the roar of the ocean outside Colm's cottage as well as the sound of the Beatles singing "Don't Let Me Down" on a period radio. Sea Marks is a thoroughly professional piece of work, and its lyrical passages may be more than enough for some audiences. But it's hard not to wish that McKay had probed his characters more deeply. One leaves the theatre remembering some lovely words, but with a rather fuzzy impression of the people speaking them.--David Barbour 
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