Shadow of a Gunman

When you flip through the highly polished pages of The New Yorker, you sometimes wonder whether a writer's facility leads you to forget that he has nothing to say. So, too, when you see a slickly-staged job of Shadow of a Gunman, you wonder whether Sean O'Casey invokes the world's enduring sentimentality for the Irish to obscure the fact that he dwells on an incident that seems trivial, an incident that is sadly pale when set beside the heroic achievements in human terror of which people have proven themselves so capable.

Of course a great writer in good form can make much meaning of scanty material. But O'Casey rather plainly hasn't, in this particular instance, and the Charles Playhouse fights a vain battle in trying to elicit dramatic tension from a turgid situation that O'Casey has told in a talky way.

The effect of its mighty effort, unhappily for the Charles Playhouse, is that its actors themselves invoke a stylistic staginess that serves not to obscure the vacancy of their inspiration, but rather, to emphasize it.

O'Casey concerns himself with the dreaded Black-and-Tans (Were they ever anything but "dreaded" Black-and-Tans? Didn't even their mothers love them?). The dreaded Black-and-Tans busily rip the peace of Dublin, while in shivery cold-water attics, rust-thatched idealists plan a land where freedom would be free. An innocuous poet and his cowardly roomie stash some unwanted bombs in the bosom of an ample simpleton; she is torn off screaming by the dreaded Black-and-Tans, executed, and leaves the two with the empty feeling that they've been naughty, somehow, much in the manner young George Washington must have felt.

When O'Casey is introducing his immutable characters, which is for the first three-quarters of a very long evening, he displays his talent for sketching the Irish at their lovable best-warmhearted, simple but shrewd, full of energy, laughter, stupidity. When he finally comes around to the task of giving us a little action, his patrons are so conditioned to absurdity that anything else is probably impossible.

Staged by Michael Murray, the production has clarity and pace and a disarming respect for O'Casey. Yet the actors, particularly John Heffernan in the role of the poet, seem more eager to present a "compelling" characterization than to act out their parts in harmony. Heffernan emerges as a quavering neurotic that would puzzle O'Casey, and Edward Zang, in the role of a drunken neighbor, exhibits the mannerisms of a Shubert Alley reprobate, an actor who seems to play actor on stage. Edward Finnegan's comic skill, in the role of an aging and only occasionally outer-directed apartment dweller, is the source of considerable amusement despite, and perhaps because of, its irrelevancy. Robert G.Skinner designed the setting, which is of no special interest; Lewis W.Lehman's lights are excellent, as are Esther Small's costumes.

As the scanty audience increased in its passivity, a small and amateur claque caused a good bit of rustling and unrest in the back of the hall, distracting the audience and perhaps insulting it by hoots of enthusiasm that the paying customers could not share. If he's any sort of professional (and the program claims he certainly is), Mr.Murray, the director, should take these urchins across his knee.