It’s worth braving the elements when your destination is thrilling theater. Visiting this pair of vastly different entertainments will surely dazzle all your senses: Lin-Manuel Miranda’s rap-pop driven, rapturously clever “Hamilton” is genius made visible and haunting and beautifully executed. And the Irish Repertory Theater’s exquisite revival of Hugh Leonard’s haunting Tony-winning “Da” will break your heart a little — and summon memories of your own “life with father”— whether past or ongoing.
First performed by the Rep in 1996, “Da” is set in Dublin in 1968 and in times remembered when Hugh Leonard lost his quixotic “Da.” It took some decades for this haunting, life-enriching memory play to flow from the playwright’s mix of emotions about his controlling, multi-faceted sire. But when they did the torrent of Leonard’s feelings gave the world a haunting portrait of a man whose sometime vindictive actions in retrospect revealed a caring heart in a stubborn mind.
In Leonard’s hark-back, son Charlie is played as a grown man by the superb Ciarin O’Reilly, both winning and troubling your mind as his Da comes to terms when he’s summoned to return to the family apartment immediately after his father’s death to tend to his burial. With the lone visitor an irritating childhood acquaintance who’d made good, once the ‘spirit” of Da roars onto the scene (the evening’s most haunting performance is delivered by magnificent Paul O’Brien). The play explodes. Charlie’s beloved step-mom is next to come home (memorable Fiana Toibin), swelling the playwright’s memories of her long-suffering emotional angst, squelched down the decades by her controlling spouse. In an equally fine turn, Adam Petherbridges young Charlie soon also shows up — and we watch him go through the challenges it took for the playwright to finally defy his Da and set off to pursue a life and world of his own.
Every family bears its own saga, but Leonard, who died in 2009, in expunging his family ghosts — including his younger self — shares some likely painful — but also bittersweet — and comic memories of what formed his own psyche; and led him to become the hugely observant chronicler he was, writing successfully for television, film, radio and The Irish Times until his death at 83. The emotional vicissitudes of the playwright may not mirror the branches of your own family tree — although they did mine in re-awakening memories of a totally “larger than life” dad who also very much marched to his own drummer; Though down vastly different paths than DA we come to know and appreciate in this moving quasi-autobiographical visit down some of Leonard’s memory lanes. Extended now thru April 5 at the Irish Repertory Theater in their seasonal “home” at the DR2 Theatre in Union Square while renovating their own performance space. Tickets at (212) 727-2727. A must see “memory to cherish!”
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