Thirst
2021; Penn State University Press; Volume: 42; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.5325/eugeoneirevi.42.2.0220
ISSN2161-4318
Autores ResumoMy husband and I—playwrights in search of a play—entered the world-renowned Marie Selby Botanical Gardens in Sarasota, Florida, after sunset for a staged reading of Thirst, written by Galway-born Ronán Noone and directed by Brendan Ragan, co-founder of Sarasota's Urbanite Theatre. The event kicked off the Urbanite Outdoor Reading Series, a wintertime activity possible only in warm climates, although even subtropical Florida can be chilly in January. An email warned us: “Please dress warm and/or bring blankets. The current forecast suggests temperatures in the 50s after sunset. In the case of rain, the performance will be cancelled and you will be notified.” We weren't deterred. Zoom fatigue from innumerable COVID-era readings with actors in boxes left us hungry for live theater.Selby at night is magical! Under a starry sky, white light bulbs shone from trees high overhead as patrons sat socially distanced on lawn chairs, two by two à la Noah's ark. They faced the wide veranda of a historic mansion where three actors and a narrator, under Ragan's sure direction, took them into the cramped kitchen of August-hot Monte Cristo Cottage in 1912 Connecticut. This was the home of the “four haunted Tyrones,” avatars for Eugene O'Neill's family in Long Day's Journey Into Night—but the Tyrones aren't in Thirst. Never seen and rarely heard, they yield to their servants and to the lives that Noone created for them. Here are Cathleen Mullin (Zoya Martin), the Second Girl who appears briefly in Long Day's Journey as the sometime companion of Mary Tyrone, as well as two characters only mentioned therein: the First Girl, Cathleen's aunt Bridget Conroy (Amanda Schlacter); and a man O'Neill simply calls “the chauffeur” or “Smythe,” who is now given the first name of Jack (Tom Foley).Like Long Day's Journey, Thirst takes place in one day, beginning before breakfast at 7:11 a.m. and ending the next day at 7:16 a.m. Times are announced at the start of each of the nine scenes and pegged to the Tyrone family's activities in the adjoining, unseen dining room, which the servants monitor vigilantly.Usual criteria for production values don't apply to this outdoor, bare-bones reading, staged without an intermission. Audiences remained engaged despite cool weather and occasional noise from passing boats, motorcycles, and a nearby airport's low-flying airplanes. Lighting was basic: lights on/lights off. Blocking was minimal and physical comedy was necessarily absent, but narration told us the characters moved continuously to cook, wash dishes, serve, and so on. The actors were mic'd, audible, animated, and accented, and the rich brogues of Bridget and Cathleen were clear. Jack's speech was undoubtedly American.There is a backstory here. I met Ronán Noone in July 2017, during the Tenth Eugene O'Neill International Festival at the National University of Ireland, Galway, his undergraduate and graduate alma mater. He had emigrated to the United States in 1994 and was back in Galway for a staged reading of his play The Second Girl (the original version of Thirst), directed by Thomas Conway, the Druid Theatre's director-in-residence at NUIG. I learned that Noone, steeped in Long Day's Journey, had been drawn to that play's overlooked fifth character, Cathleen. Surely she had a life beyond her poorly paid servitude, he thought. But what life? To find answers, he drew on his imagination, his Irish upbringing, and the painful immigrant experiences of loneliness and assimilation. The result was The Second Girl. Campbell Scott directed the premiere at Boston University's Huntington Theatre in 2015, and it has had other productions, winning the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) Excellence in Playwriting Award that year.Noone wanted to improve it. He wrote me, I was never satisfied with the character dynamics being fully integrated into the script. So I added more informality into the dialogue and focused on building more character into Bridget and Jack and their relationship. I added to the action to find more comedy…. And there are plot changes too, that hopefully capture the moments of heartbreak. In essence, I reworked the script and I got to know the characters better because of that work. He also changed the title, borrowing from O'Neill's early play Thirst—a short tragedy about two men and a woman whose cruise ship has sunk. On a raft with no food, water, or shelter while sharks circle, they are doomed. I wondered: did Noone see his characters marooned and doomed in the Tyrone kitchen? Did “Thirst” indicate their thirst for life? Or booze? His answer was simpler: “The title plays into the metaphor of capturing the desire of each of the characters. Notably it captures the ensemble dynamics of the play rather than the confusing focus of it being about just the Second Girl.”Thus was born this revision, which he had not yet heard aloud. Thanks to Urbanite, Sarasotans were one step ahead of the playwright, and my husband and I might be the only people in the world who have attended performances of both versions. Previously a solid piece of work, it is now much improved and tentatively rescheduled for Vermont's Dorset Theatre Festival under Theresa Rebeck's direction, COVID permitting.Noone's dialogue is sarcastic, funny, fresh, flirtatious, full of love, and aching with heartbreak. He often follows O'Neill's pattern of blame-and-retraction, as when Bridget tells Cathleen, “Pity you didn't drown when the Titanic went down.” Cathleen responds: “That's a wicked thing to say.” Bridget, again: “You're right…. I apologize. I don't know why'd I say that.” On the surface, the sometimes-barbed conversations might sound like love-hate relationships, but the depth Noone gives his characters reveals caring, unselfish love.The three chase their dreams, endure their disappointments, prevail over their pains, and guard their secrets. They want to move past pain to a better life, although Cathleen has not yet experienced hurt at the start. Both women yearn for Ireland, but Bridget can never go back. Cathleen plans to return as a rich actress and marry her beau, Michael. Jack, the former town drunk, wants a new start in a new town with Bridget by his side.I watched Thirst with Noone's goals in mind and believe he has achieved them beautifully, although to my husband and me it seems more Bridget's play than an ensemble piece. If so, does Bridget's strength come from the couple's heightened relationship, Ragan's direction, Schlacter's superb acting, or something else? It is a hard call, especially since Foley and Martin also shine in their roles, and Kelsey Fisher's narration helps maintain both the mood and the lively pace. Perhaps the combined elements contributed to my perception of a focus on Bridget. It will be interesting to observe Noone's revisions as he moves forward with the script.Thirst opens with Bridget on the floor, waking from an alcoholic binge and calling Jack. She staggers up, asking, “What did I do?” She makes the sign of the cross and comically works through her hangover as she starts breakfast for the Tyrones, generating the first of many laughs during the performance. Schlacter wins the audience at the outset, and the cast holds them as she, Foley, and Martin play seamlessly off one another. Jack enters, puts his arms around her waist gently, and reminds her of last night, when she said that she loved him: “I carried you inside, Bridget.” Fearing—needlessly—that something “untoward” had happened, she says, “away from me,” not meaning it. Here is everything we need to know about their love. Foley holds a firm grasp on Jack's stability, ambition, and unwavering love for Bridget. Schlacter's Bridget is the opposite. She is driven by secret shame, a relentless sense of duty, and ultimate hopelessness, vacillating between her love for Jack and such dread of the future that she fears leaving her one place of safety.From the dining room, saucy, irreverent Cathleen declaims lines learned from actor James Tyrone. Recently arrived from Ireland on the Titanic at Aunt Bridget's expense, she breezes into the kitchen, boasting that Tyrone's promised two dollars for learning lines. “Holding the carrot over a donkey,” Bridget says, later adding, “He'd turn filling a kettle with water into a five-act tragedy.”Martin deftly shifts Cathleen's exuberance to sorrow, shock, then anger when the young immigrant receives a letter from her fiancé saying he's marrying another. Crushed, she tells Bridget that she'll never “end up a cranky spinster like yourself.” Bridget, shaken, reaches for her whiskey. Finally she tells Jack her secret: fourteen years ago, unwed, she bore a son now being raised by her sister. Disowned, disgraced, and abandoned by her lover, she emigrated to America. Jack responds kindly and they become affectionate. “Maybe I can walk you to your room this evening,” he says as he exits. Schlacter conveys Bridget's indecision, fear of abandonment, and regret. “I say cruel things now, Cathleen…. And I use never be like that at all.” Tipsy and singing, but then sobbing over her lost love, Martin's Cathleen says, “Ahh, Bridget…. The whole world wants to see you happy … you go with Jack…. Because he loves true.” Sobbing through her heartbreak, she says, “You go with him. You go with him.”Foley portrays Jack's cautious optimism as he returns later to say he's leaving for Ohio in the morning and to remind the hesitant Bridget that she promised to go with him. “Maybe I don't deserve you,” he says. She begins kissing him hungrily as they exit. The next morning, he enters with his suitcase to find Bridget, in uniform, making breakfast for the Tyrones. He's confused. She pours his coffee and puts her hand on his shoulder. He holds it. Then Edmund coughs in the dining room, and Bridget, ever the servant, goes to him, leaving Jack alone. Heartbroken, he picks up his suitcase and leaves as the play ends. (In The Second Girl Jack stayed, but now Noone has made a different choice: “I wanted them to get on with their lives.”)When I spoke afterwards with Ragan, he said, “The most exciting scene is offstage: What happened in Bridget's room that night?” When I asked Ronán, he said, “Ah, that's the beauty of theatre, that you can be ambiguous.” You can be painfully honest, too, as when clear-eyed Cathleen tells Jack, “Us Irish don't have heartbreaks … a broken heart is not a qualification to being Irish. 'Tis getting up with the pieces of the heart in your hand and asking the fella who broke it if he wouldn't mind giving you a kick in the head too. That's Irish.” That's Thirst.
Referência(s)