It’s Christmastime, and what better way to spend a wintry evening than in the stately Dublin home of the elderly Morkan sisters, the stern Kate (Úna Clancy) and the music-loving Julia (Mary Beth Peil), as well as their niece Mary Jane (Karen Killeen), who scratches out a modest living teaching piano. The hostesses are key figures in James Joyce’s novella The Dead — which director Ciarán O’Reilly has staged as a lovely immersive theater piece that will prepare you for all those awkward holiday-party encounters with family, friends, and acquaintances who can try your patience even as you welcome their embrace.
The Irish Rep first staged The Dead, 1904 in 2016 — when it became a hot ticket by inviting modern theatergoers into the gorgeous 1901 Beaux-Arts townhouse mansion that’s been home to the American Irish Historical Society for eight decades, across Fifth Avenue from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The stately residence, which recently survived a controversial, now-scuttled plan to be sold so the charity could pay off debts and decamp upstate to Cooperstown, New York, retains its period details and is decked out for a party marking the Feast of the Epiphany. The cast, wearing period-perfect costumes by Leon Dobkowski, individually greets audience members on the second floor as attendants offer glasses of Irish whiskey and sherry, with a rum punch set up on a table across from the fully laureled fireplace.
The party guests, including the cast, gather around the piano and the violinist, Miss Daly (Heather Bixler), as they play music, sing, and dance — interrupted by brief sketches where we get to know some of the characters: the famous and somewhat reserved tenor Bartell D’Arcy (Michael Kuhn), who can barely hide his infatuation with Miss Daly; the comically inebriated Freddy Malins (Gary Troy), who seems perpetually on the verge of falling over; and the indelicate Molly Ivors (Aedín Moloney), who needles the Morkans’ beloved middle-aged nephew Gabriel (Christopher Innvar) for deigning to write a literary column for a British-leaning newspaper. (“There’s nothing political in writing reviews of books,” he insists.) We also meet Gabriel’s wife, Gretta (played by the ever-luminous Kate Baldwin), who gently teases her husband about his enthusiasm for new-fangled galoshes (“Gabriel says everyone wears them on the Continent”) and seems somewhat withdrawn from the gathering for reasons that become clearer in the final scene.
Before long, the crowd is invited into the ample front room for dinner — where most of the 50-member audience is seated at narrow tables along the walls, facing a central head table for the costumed guests, along with a handful of theatergoers who pay $1,000 apiece for the privilege of enjoying in-character small talk. You’re served a simple, hearty holiday meal (catered by Great Performances) of barely warm roast turkey, beef tenderloin, green beans, mashed potatoes (“what the vulgar people call ‘spuds,'” Gabriel comments), and bread-and-butter pudding with vanilla custard for dessert, with your choice of red or white wine. (You can also alert staff to any allergies or dietary restrictions when booking your tickets.)
None of this comes cheap: the historic setting, the cast of 12 plus service staff, the meal, the necessarily small audience size. Most tickets cost $400, though a handful are on sale for $200 (for which you’re seated in a bar chair to look down on the dinner scene, without partaking). But there is something transporting about the overall experience, as if you have become an extra in a ballroom scene in the HBO series The Gilded Age that’s been transposed to turn-of-the-20th-century Ireland. There’s the whiff, and flavor, of reliving history and getting caught up in a time and place that’s far removed from our own. (Patrons are encouraged to eschew informal attire, like jeans and sneakers, though comfortable shoes are recommended given the long periods of standing or climbing the townhouse’s wide central staircase.)
Devotees of Joyce may quibble about this staging. Unlike the quintessentially Irish author’s original story or John Huston’s memorable 1987 film adaptation, the script by Paul Muldoon and Jean Hanff Korelitz doesn’t really explore the interior monologue of its taciturn and writerly hero, Gabriel, except in a well-executed final scene where he and Gretta settle down after the party in their hotel bedroom (situated for this show on the third floor, just above the dining room, with the audience cramming in on one side to face the windows overlooking Central Park and the Met). Here, Gretta drifts off to sleep after confessing the memory of a girlhood love that the evening’s festivities have jostled back into her mind. And Gabriel is finally able to articulate aloud his deep-seated anxieties about the choices he’s made as well as the overall evanescence of life — as snow magically falls just outside the window. The Dead, 1904 captures the sublimely melancholy mood of Joyce’s story, like a melody from the past that’s bubbled back into our consciousness, and that alone is cause to rejoice.
THE DEAD, 1904
American Irish Historical Society, Off Broadway
Running time: 2 hours
Tickets on sale through Jan. 5
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