Jones’ play, a shrewd and frequently very funny, ultimately a dark meditation on her native Ireland
For the Ottawa Citizen. Photo: Andrew Alexander “I am Sean Harkin and I am someone!” declares a young and seriously troubled character at an early point in Marie Jones’ tragicomedy Stones in His Pockets.
It’s a brave declaration of selfhood by this youth who, in that moment, speaks for so many of his fellow countrymen in contemporary Ireland. And, like other attempts by those countrymen to drag themselves from the mire of economic dislocation, cultural appropriation and defeatism, Harkin’s proclamation is doomed to be little more than words.
All of which makes Jones’ play, shrewd and frequently very funny, ultimately a dark meditation on her native Ireland. That juxtaposition of comedy and tragedy demands subtle intensity and focus in a production if the play is to strike its intended sparks. That doesn’t always happen in this show, which opens The Gladstone’s new season.
The play, a two-hander starring Zach Counsil and Richard Gélinas, is about a Hollywood film crew setting up shop in rural Ireland and using the locals as extras in its romanticized movie about the old sod.
Counsil and Gélinas play over a dozen characters, including the two main ones: local extras named, respectively, Charlie Conlon and Jake Quinn.
Charlie’s an inveterate and perennially randy optimist who believes he can escape his economic doldrums by flogging his movie script to the deep-pocketed American filmmakers.
Jake is his apparent contrary, a man left jaundiced and suspicious by life.
Jones has created a cavalcade of other characters, and Counsil and Gélinas work with only minor costume switches on a bare-bones set to populate the stage.
There’s the preening, opportunistic lead actress Caroline Giovanni with her appalling Irish accent and condescending remarks to the locals (“You people are so simple, uncomplicated, contented”). She’s played by Counsil in camped-up fashion, which makes her quicksilver shifts from flirtatious to vicious almost frightening.
Counsil also plays Giovanni’s brawny Scottish body guard, the gum-chewing movie director and others including Sean Harkin’s farmer father. The latter, following the mid-play tragedy, tells Jake, “Rain, hail or death, the cows have to be milked.” It’s a line that, with variations, is surely universal and in the case of this Irish setting resonates with an acceptance of reality that’s at once reassuring and terribly sad.
Gélinas, meanwhile, gives us a terrific Aisling, an ever-chipper assistant director who flaps about the film set calling, “Big smiles, everyone!” and grouping the actors for the next take.
He plays others including Mickey, a wizened local who outwits — or does he? — the arrogant filmmakers, thereby earning our silent applause.
Gélinas also finds the touching uncertainty and still-unsullied innocence lurking deep inside Jake.
Counsil and Gélinas together give us an uproarious Riverdance, one of the many native touches the filmmakers think will give their movie authenticity.
Of course, authenticity is the last thing Hollywood, a metaphor for grasping imperialism of all stripes, understands or cares about. Authenticity seems also to have fled the Irish countryside where everyone, save a few like Sean Harkin’s father, is as confused as Charlie and Jake about who they really are……..
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