This Lime Tree Bower at the BCA

I've heard it said that one of the most catastrophic events in the history of theater came with the development of motion pictures. Sure, the theater has been battling other forms of distractions for ages trying to maintain a steady audience. And to be fair, it must have been pretty hard to draw crowds away from a good bear baiting back in Shakespeare's day. But the movies are something else entirely. Never before has a form of entertainment so suddenly and dynamically stolen the magic of illusion and performance that once belonged to theater. Many a poor 20th century dramatist has spent his career searching for ways to put theater back at the center of humanity's imaginative life. Leave it to an Irishman to figure the whole thing out. If there is one thing which the movies cannot and will not ever be able to capture, it is the sheer enchantment of sitting in a room with another human being and listening to a story. And I'm not talking about the bedtime variety. No, the story Im talking about is the kind you hear from the guy sitting next to you at the pub, the story about the guy who owns the chipper down the streetyou know, Joe and Frank's dad. There's a smell of whiskey in the air and you're sure the bloke staring you in the face is telling you the biggest load of bollocks this side of Cork, but you can't help but listen. Conor McPherson, one of the hottest young playwrights to come out of Ireland in the last decade, has made a career on just this sort of intimate performance, the kind that exists nowhere but in theaters and establishments that serve alcohol. You certainly won't find it at the local tenplex. His biggest successes, like The Weir, have taken this technique to its extremities, packing Broadway and West End theaters and then filling everyone in on the local stories of an Irish town. The result often feels more forced than intimate. But anyone who's heard the chilling central monologue of The Weir and experienced an entire theater falling into rapt silence knows that there's a core power to expert storytelling that can't be lost on any scale.This power is undoubtedly strongest, however, on the smallest scale. And therein lies the success of the Sugan Theatre Company's production of This Lime Tree Bower, one of McPherson's earliest plays, currently playing at the Boston Center for the Arts. First produced in Dublin and shortly thereafter in London, This Lime Tree Bower brought McPherson international recognition. Its easy to see why. Whereas a play like The Weir loses something from the disconnectedness of its monologues, This Lime Tree Bower is a fugue for three voices, a careful interweaving of three characters and three stories. Each of the leads--Joe, an awkward teenager who's desperate to be cool, Frank, his dutiful older brother, and Ray, a gleefully amoral professor of ethics--has his own events to relate, his own point to make and his own secrets to share. One thinks he may be falling in love with another boy at school. One ends up robbing a bookie. One has two goals in life: to disprove the work of a world-famous philosopher and to have sex so hard that he breaks the condom. But their tales are constantly intersecting, overlapping or running parallel. By the end, their three stories, as amazing as it may seem, have fused into one.It's a masterful narrative braiding, and it's almost as interesting as the stories themselves. But nothing really takes the place of a good yarn, and that's where this production truly shines. If any playwright should be performed in a pub, it's McPherson. You need to see the contours of his characters' faces at close range and hear every one of their vocal inflections spoken only a few feet away from you. J. Michael Griggs' set design for the Boston Center for the Arts Black Box Theater is not a far cry from just such an atmosphere. His abstract black, stone and wood arrangement is reminiscent of nothing in particular, but it seems not too far from a misty Irish morning or a fish and chips shop by the shore. The real advantage of the black box, however, is its size. Walking up and down the aisles, staring audience members in the face and never straying more than ten or fifteen feet from anyone in the house, McPherson's characters come alive in this production in a way that they can't do on a Broadway proscenium.And when they do come alive, it's a joy to watch. McPherson's gift of gab is prodigious. It's not so much eloquence (though he knows how to turn a phrase) as quantity that's so impressive. He's got enough blarney in him to spread across three characters for two hours and still seem like he's got a good lot left over. And the Sugan's actors know just what to do with McPherson's stream of words. Aidan Parkinson as Ray is deliciously self-absorbed--he's also more than happy to share his narcissism with any who will listen. And if you're not listening at first, he'll make sure you are before long. Ciaran Crawford as Frank may be the best actor of the bunch. Theres a natural honesty to his character that's one of the hardest things to pull off on stage. Nathaniel Gundy as Joe has the unfortunate task of playing the awkward teenager, one of the most well-worn roles in the history of theater and film. He fumbles initially, but by the time his second monologue comes around he's moved into his role with enough assurance to tell as good a story as you'll find in any pub around. Will these stories supplant the movies and reassert the centrality of theater to the cultural life of nations across the globe? Probably not. But there's something satisfying about hearing them, something that no amount of cinematic smoke and lights can begin to touch. Some might say this is how theater got started, in the performing of stories. Whether or not that's true, it's certainly a nice place for it to be at right now.