Review: Lay Me Down Softly (Seanachai Theatre)

  
  
Lay Me Down Softly

Written by Billy Roche
Directed by Kevin Christopher Fox
at The Den Theatre, 1333 N. Milwaukee (map)
thru May 25  |  tickets: $26-$30   |  more info
  
Check for half-price tickets 
  
  
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Poetic but imperfect, boxing tale scores in subtlety

Seanachai Theatre presents

Lay Me Down Softly

Review by Clint May 

Quintessentially Irish, Lay Me Down Softly does exactly as the title suggests. Even set amongst the life of a traveling road show with boxing as the main attraction, there’s no vicious left hook. In fact, there’s barely any actual boxing to be had. Rather, it’s a wistful study of squandered potentials that gently embraces us and lands its blows with a multi-perspective parable on the importance of second chances. Though it debuted in 2008, Roche’s first work following his indelible Wexford Trilogy feels like a small but classic work of the 20th century. That’s fitting for a tale of people trapped in the amber of their past. It takes some skill to breathe life into characters that might otherwise be stereotypes, and Seanachai has wrought their minor heroism with a calm sense of assuredness in the story that makes this—though not a monumental work—an elegant reflection on Roche’s themes of men in a state of arrested development.

For this makeshift family, their present is much like their location: itinerant and ill-defined. Only the past is solid. It’s little wonder that they so frequently reminisce about the places they thought they couldn’t wait to get away from.  Their ersatz father-figure is Theo (Jeff Christian), a former boxer with a seemingly easy going temperament that can turn disturbingly gouger on the turn of a quid. He’s accumulated the detritus of would-have-beens to rule over, and they begrudgingly accept his reality rather than risk self-determination. “Killer” Deano (Matthew Isler) is the rambunctious, headstrong amateur fighter afraid to fight a pro. Grizzled cutman Peadar (Michael Grant) tends wounds and acts as the ying to Theo’s yang. Though in theory Theo’s girlfriend, sassy Lily (Carolyn Klein) seems more like a bed warmer and reason to incite jealous feelings. Junior (Dan Waller) might have once gone pro, but a damaged Achilles Heel has left him sidelined. Their comfortably uncomfortable lives are disrupted when Theo’s daughter Emer (Jamie L. Young) runs off to join the circus and confront her estranged father. She’s a totem of the past for some, an object of jealousy for one, and the genuine Achilles Heel for Junior.

Compared to Roche’s famous trilogy, Lay Me Down Softly is a slightly more modest work built of atmosphere and character that’s thematically redolent but dramatically inert. Most of the action takes place out of scene or in the finely tuned soliloquies describing some other place or time. Seanachai’s cast ably rises to the occasion to paint these portraits inside the ever-talented Joe Schermoly’s dusty diorama. Nicely honed accents courtesy of dialect coach Eva Breneman ensure comprehensibility  under Kevin Christopher Fox’s equally honed, patient direction. Perhaps simply because he gets the broadest range of emotions to display, Christian’s Theo is the most captivating even if he’s not a wholly realized character on the page and sometimes goes over the top in his crustiness. There’s a special place in my heart for a fierce Irish floozie, and Klein does not disappoint, as she matches energies with Isler’s scrappy take-all-comers attitude. Waller is perhaps the most hopeful of characters, shyly but inexorably taken in by Young’s muted interpretation of an Irish Manic Pixie Dream Girl and her promise of a new chapter. Grant’s grizzled Peadar becomes perhaps the only thing resembling a protagonist—at least an antihero—based on a key revelation that you must pay close attention to discern.

What really makes this work is Roche’s sense of detail: Theo’s fascination with jigsaw puzzles of lovely things that represent a desire to build a life more beautiful than the brutal one faced daily—a contradictory choice for a man who is so often the very source of that brutality; Lily’s fascination with the vagabond girl on the milk bottle labels of her hometown. Unfortunately, Lay Me Down Softly throws the towel in on itself with an ending that is pure wish fulfillment in the midst of so much gritty naturalism. It’s not grounds for disqualification, but it keeps this from being the truly potent parable it might have been.

Rating: ★★½

Lay Me Down Softly continues through May 25th at The Den Theatre, 1333 N. Milwaukee (map), with performances Thursdays-Saturdays at 7:30pm, Sundays 3pm.  Tickets are $26-$30, and are available by phone (866-811-4111) or online through OvationTix.com (check for half-price tickets at Goldstar.com). More information at Seanachai.org.  (Running time: 2 hours 5 minutes, includes an intermission)

Photos by Emily Schwartz

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artists

cast

Jeff Christian (Theo), Michael Grant (Peadar), Carolyn Klein (Lily), Dan Waller (Junior), Matthew Isler (Dean), Jamie L. Young (Emer); Bridgette Hammond, Jill Oliver (understudies)

behind the scenes

Kevin Christopher Fox (director), Joe Schermoly (scenic design), Beth Laske-Miller (costume design), Julian Pike (lighting design), Stephen Ptacek (sound design), Eva Breneman (dialect design), John Tovar (fight choreographer), Coburn Goss (production stage manager), Jen Bukovsky (stage manager), Emylee Dahl (makeup design), Nadia Garofalo (props design), Nora Lubitsch (asst. costume design), Annaliese McSweeney (dramaturg), Al Ortiz (boxing coach), Emily Schwartz (photos)

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