Last week we saw a special preview of the Irish Repertory Theatre's production of The Dead, 1904. This is truly an amazing theatrical experience.

This a strictly limited run production, and each performance is limited to 40 audience members, so it will be an incredibly hard ticket:  it means that only 2,000 people in toto will be able to enjoy this extraordinary theatrical treat...so act fast!  Because it will sell out so quickly, I am going to provide ticket information before even describing the play:

Tickets:

        Special Events:

Based on the short story, " The Dead," by James Joyce (last story in his book, The Dubliners), this adaptation for the stage by Pulitzer Prize winning poet, Paul Muldoon and his wife, novelist Jean Hanff Korelitz, captures both the power and the subtlety of Joyce's transfixing story.  It is wonderfully directed by Ciran O'Reilly.

" The Dead" takes place at a dinner party in Dublin in 1904, and the play is staged as an annual Epiphany dinner party that the audience is attending, given by two elderly sisters, Aunts Julia ( Patti Perkins) and Kate Morkan ( Patricia Kilgarriff) and their niece Mary Jane ( Barrie Kreinik).  I am usually turned off by audience participation theater, but both Nancy and I absolutely adored The Dead, 1904, and it was different from any other such "immersion" theatrical experience we had ever seen. There was nothing hokey or contrived about this production--and nothing that one as an audience member is required to do:  the story is about a dinner party, and you simply are a guest at that party.  It is set in the beautiful American Irish Historical Society building on Fifth Avenue in the 80s--the perfect setting for this story. You are greeted in the entrance hall by the maid, Lily (played by Claire O'Malley), who leads you upstairs to the salon, where, during the cocktails before dinner, you are offered drinks, and mingle with the actors, in character, who engage with you in occasional small talk .  The action begins to take place around you as the actor/guests arrive.  Eventually you are invited into the dining room for dinner, where you actually eat dinner with the actors, as the action of the play continues.  For the final emotional climax of the story, you are led upstairs to the bedroom to witness the interaction between the main character, Gabriel (the nephew of the two Morkan sisters, his mother being the deceased third sister; played by the extremely talented Boyd Gaines) and his wife, Gretta ( Kate Burton).  From start to finish, the play works seamlessly with you as audience member being a part of it.

Boyd Gaines is able to create wordlessly in the beginning of the final scene the incredible sexual energy and tension Joyce described in his story, which is so essential to providing the background for the intensity of the other emotions that are revealed as the scene progresses through to its surprising and existentially profound conclusion.  The entire cast is marvelous; and the play is intelligently conceived, effectively staged and directed, and flawlessly executed.  (Even some of the necessary changes from the book-- e.g., the shift of the final bedroom scene from a hotel to the Morkan's upstairs bedroom--are done in ways that add to rather than detract from the movement and the sense of Joyce's original story.)

This is truly an extraordinary theatrical event, so I suggest you jump on the possibility as quickly as possible.  It is an expensive evening, however, so you might try to get in on the special reduced-price ticket lottery.  

We should not even have been aware of this gem had we not been invited to a special performance hosted by dear friends of ours.  Other than the fact that all the audience were also "friends who knew each other and had been invited to this dinner party--and the fact that I'm sure the sherry and whiskey that were served for cocktails, the fine wines served at the dinner, and the port served after the meal are almost certainly not the standard fare for normal evenings of the show--it was a standard performance...but the "standard" is quite exceptional!