By Bradford Cover

I have about an hour and a half between scenes in The Playboy of The Western World. I love our new space at City Center, but backstage there aren’t too many options for places to wait.  Between conversations with fellow actors, reading the paper online, and looking at my lines for Misalliance, I can hear Playboy going on over the monitors.  What a beautiful play.  I love hearing this talented cast doing it every night—making little changes and deepening things.

Bradford Cover as Michael James | Photo by Gregory Costanzo

As I sit and listen, it thrills me to hear the audience laugh at certain lines.   The play has a devilishly funny current running through it.  As the people of the village begin to worship Christy for his dire act, the audience’s delight sucks them into the story, and eventually makes them complicit in his crime.  Every night this carries the audience through the piece as Synge plays with this idea, and surprises the audience with plot twists, and different views of the event, so that the ending becomes quite personal to them.

Sean McNall as Christy Mahon | Photo by Gregory Costanzo

This process reminds me of the great gangster movies—Clockwork Orange, Bonnie and Clyde, Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid to name a few.  Our capacity to love a criminal is endless, and primitive, and it says something about our basic existence.  We all long to break free from the rules that govern us, and to go out into the world — free.    Freedom is of course relative to what kind of rules one is used to dealing with.  In Western Ireland at the turn of the last century freedom means something quite different than it does to us Manhattan dwellers in the 21^st Century.  But I am so encouraged by that laughter.

Many years ago I knew a guy who didn’t like to play by the rules.  He fought against a conventional life all through school and well into his adulthood.  I just got word that he has recently settled down with a girlfriend, a house, a job, and a dog.  I called him to see if this was a change of heart, or if he felt he had given up.  He said simply that he was happy, and didn’t feel at all that he had given up, but was still fighting the good fight of freedom. He seemed so happy, but not at all complacent.   I think of him often as I listen to this play.  It makes me wonder if we are truly free by wearing the shackles we choose,  rather than those that are forced upon us.  Or is it that we will always yearn for a freer state of being, regardless of our circumstances, and this is what makes us human?

Bradford Cover is currently playing Michael James in The Pearl Theatre Company’s production of THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD. He has been a member of the Resident Acting Company at The Pearl since 1996.

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“Can you believe we have an audience on Friday?”

A discussion on propping up a drunken Michael James. From left to right: J.R. Sullivan, Sean McNall, Bradford Cover, and Lee Stark

I was chatting with our fantastic Stage Manager, Lisa Ledwich, during last Sunday’s rehearsal of The Playboy of the Western World when she pointed this out to me. It was the final run of the show before we went into tech this week—the next time the actors played it through was dress rehearsal last night.

Seriously, where does the time go? One day there’s a group of actors sitting around a table wrapping their mouths around Irish vowels for the first time, the next, Harry Feiner, our set designer is staple-gunning moss to the edge of a still drying set as Rachel Laritz, our costume designer, puts the finishing stitches on a red petticoat.

But I suppose my somewhat skewed sense of time is an occupational hazard. As a dramaturg, I often see the growth of a show in snapshots rather than seeing every step of the process. I’m around at the beginning, for the first few days of table-work as the actors and director talk through the script, sifting through actions, ideas, and story arcs. And as much prep-work as I do before a show begins, often it’s the actors’ questions and interests that come up here that lead me to the most interesting places—for The Playboy I spent a fascinating (and somewhat bittersweet) week trolling for images and sound-sources related to the practice of “keening,” and a hilarious morning on YouTube listening to The Clancy Brothers’ renditions of traditional Irish tunes (they wear matching knit sweaters—how great is that?!?).

A brief respite from the rigors of the day: Joe Kady as Old Mahon

I bop in and out of the initial round of blocking, to see if any further questions come up once the play is “on its feet,” but after that, I try to limit myself to watching the run-throughs, so I can offer the director an outsider’s perspective on what’s happening on the stage if he or she wants it—which is a real challenge when the show is exciting and I want to be there for every minute!

With The Playboy, it was particularly hard to stay away. Watching the company build the strange little corner of the world that J.M. Synge has written, seeing them find a physical life for the curious creatures who inhabit it, has been a real privilege. I love how rough and tumble things are, both physically and verbally. This is a village of storytellers who live by making things up as they go—that sense of improvisation and exploration is really feeding how people talk and move throughout the play.

Costume adjustment! Director J.R. Sullivan and Bradford Cover (Michael James).

As I write this we’re working through the play to add in lights, costumes, and sound, figuring out exactly which cups, jugs, tumblers, and plates we’re going to use, and fine-tuning the incredible fight scene at the end of the play (which I know only looks scary through the magic of theatre—a.k.a. fight director Rod Kinter—but still makes me bite my nails a bit).

And tonight we enter by far the most exciting part of the run, when we finally get to put things up in front of an audience, and can grow the show based on what that audience tells us. I think it’s amazing how much a show gains in strength between first preview and opening night, and I can’t wait to see where The Playboy ends up.

So, yep, audience tonight—I can’t wait to hear what you think of it. See you at City Center!

-Kate Farrington

And so the season begins! On Tuesday we held our first rehearsal for THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD. Armed with bagels and coffee, the cast gathered around the table to read through the script.

After the reading, we were joined by our design team who presented the work they’ve been preparing for the show.

The Playboy takes place on the west coast of Ireland, the last part of the country most Irish emigrants saw before they left for America. In a sense, this coast is the edge of the world. In creating the lonely “shebeen” (public house) in which the play takes place, Set Designer, Harry Feiner sought to capture both the rugged, earthy lives of these characters and the sense of the wide, somewhat mysterious world somewhere beyond the walls.

Scenic Design by Harry Feiner

One of the things we were interested in exploring was the idea of conformity—that the people of this world might talk about grand deeds, but are born into a way of doing things, a way of behaving, and a way of thinking that doesn’t change much from person to person–and where Christy Mahon’s sudden appearance strikes them like a bolt from the blue. Rachel Laritz’s costume design utilizes the women’s red skirts and men’s work jackets that were widely worn across Ireland well into the 20^th century, and emphasize this sense of convention–these people are all cut from the same cloth.

Design by Rachel Laritz

Design by Rachel Laritz

Design by Rachel Laritz

Design by Rachel Laritz

Design by Rachel Laritz

Design by Rachel Laritz

Design by Rachel Laritz

Design by Rachel Laritz

Design by Rachel Laritz