This Cardsharp Always Wins
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Ingmar Bergman was dead serious when he had Max von Sydow and Death break out the chessboard in 1957’s “The Seventh Seal.” Since then, however, the notion of a loser-lose-all contest has been played primarily for laughs: The game shifted to gin rummy in Woody Allen’s “Death Knocks,” and Death proved unlucky at Battleship, Clue, and Twister in the sequel to “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.” In what is perhaps a sign of the moral evolution of humanity, or perhaps an all-too-brief respite from the terrible knowledge of our mortality, or perhaps just a reliably funny gag, Old Scratch has fared less and less well in the last 50 years.
Conor McPherson splits the difference between these two stylistic extremes — scouring existentialism and goofball humor — in his fitfully profound “The Seafarer.” He juxtaposes a trio of buffoonish Dublin louts with a decidedly mirthless game of higher-than-high-stakes poker. These two approaches may not always mesh, but the Christmas Eve showdown between James “Sharky” Harkin (David Morse), a hollowed-out alcoholic, and the nattily attired, wonderfully named Mr. Lockhart (Ciarán Hinds) holds its own with the other, more internalized struggles that have made Mr. McPherson such an engaging playwright.
Here, the author — who also directs, as he did in the original National Theatre of London production — puts the focus firmly on the yobs for much of the first act. Sharky has returned to his childhood Dublin home to tend to his older brother, Richard (Jim Norton), a cantankerous old codger who has recently gone blind. Much of Richard’s energies are devoted to tracking down either bottles of whiskey or fellows who might provide said bottles. He digs up two such chums on the night in question: Nicky (Sean Mahon), who would be an insufferable mooch even if he weren’t shacked up with Sharky’s ex-wife, and Ivan (Conleth Hill), a layabout prone to flashing meaningless thumbs-up between pratfalls. Ivan’s wife and children have no idea where he is; Ivan, in turn, has no idea where his glasses or his car are.
Of these four characters, Sharky is the only one who is given much of an internal life. “The Seafarer” takes place entirely on one Christmas Eve, two days into Sharky’s latest stab at sobriety, and he is clearly haunted by any number of missed opportunities and impulsive errors. These demons are made flesh when Nicky swings by with a bottle from the off-license — and a new companion with a keen interest in Sharky.
Alcohol “stops the mind going into the forest,” Mr. Lockhart counsels the teetering Sharky during one of their two times alone. (Mr. McPherson struggles in contriving reasons to get the three others out of the house.) Still, Sharky finds that those thickets of remorse and selfloathing surface with or without the beer, whiskey, and “Brigid Blake’s highly illegal poteen” that the resourceful Richard has accumulated. Finally, well into the wee hours of Christmas morning, Lockhart reminds Sharky of a past debt, one that he intends to collect over a friendly game of five-card draw.
Mr. McPherson, whose earlier works consisted entirely of monologues, settles in as a director whenever he allows himself a chance to hand off a few pages of dialogue to one of his five talented performers. Nowhere is this more effective than in the marvelous Act II scene in which Lockhart conveys to Sharky the chasm-like, claustrophobic loneliness and self-loathing that awaits him on the other side, where “time is bigger and blacker and so much more boundless than you could ever have thought possible with your puny broken mind.”
The interactions among the five actors, however, are considerably less fluid and sometimes even selfish. Mr. McPherson sees to it that each actor gets his laughs and/or shudders, but often at the expense of cohesion. Mr. Mahon’s unctuous chiseler is the personification of knockoff cologne, while Mr. Norton (who won the Olivier Award during the play’s initial London run) stirs up an enjoyable ruckus. Mr. Hill has an even grander time as a man who would easily qualify as the houseguest from hell were Satan himself not already on the premises. The oak-voiced Mr. Hinds saves his energies for the two Sharky-Lockhart confrontations, summoning a truly fearsome blend of single-mindedness and affected nonchalance, while Mr. Morse is superb as a man painfully aware of how few opportunities he has had and how badly he has botched even those.
These five valiant performers, aided by Neil Austin’s eerie lighting, just barely manage to provide the emotional solder to these two incongruous plot threads. And I suppose falling-down drunkenness isn’t terribly conducive to any meaningful level of fellow feeling. Part of the kick of “The Seafarer,” too, comes as the threads finally dovetail; two contests are taking place simultaneously, one for a fistful of euros and one for eternal damnation, with the larger group of players entirely ignorant of this second battle being waged.
Or maybe not entirely ignorant. One of Sharky’s fellow players had a similar bit of luck a few years back, and by the time “The Seafarer” winds down to its satisfying if slightly gimmicky conclusion, the day of recompense may be drawing near. The devil, it appears, is due at least one more sodden Dubliner. He might consider bringing his chessboard next time.
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