Ireland can never seem to outlive the long, dark legacy of The Troubles — a period that looms large in Leo McGann’s often gripping new thriller, The Honey Trap, which opened Sunday at the Irish Repertory Theatre. The story centers on a former British soldier named Dave (Michael Hayden) who can’t shake the days he spent patrolling the streets of Belfast in the late 1970s and a memorable night when a pub night with an Army buddy resulted in his comrade’s brutal murder by IRA fighters. He agrees to share his story with a young Irish American grad student (Molly Ranson) who’s collecting oral histories of the era — and who doesn’t always go far enough to conceal her anti-British bias while questioning a rare subject on the British side of the conflict.
Even decades later, Dave seems haunted by the killing — which we see unfold in flashbacks that erupt around the interview table on Charlie Corocran’s simple but stylized set. In director Matt Torney’s staging, Hayden’s Dave looks on as both narrator and observer to his actions as a young corporal (where he’s played by Daniel Marconi). While he puts up a combative front, provoking his supposedly impassive interviewer with personal questions and needling her about her politics, Dave also exudes unresolved emotions about his role in Northern Ireland. He regrets luring his reluctant, happily married pal, Bobby (Harrison Tipping, slightly overplaying the wide-eyed innocent), into a situation where he was persuaded to go home with some pretty locals they had just met over beers and vodka-tonics (Doireann Mac Mahon and Annabelle Zasowski). He also harbors survivor’s guilt since he sent sweet-faced Bobby into a trap all alone; he himself got cold feet after a phone call home to his wife and didn’t join the extramarital shenanigans.
Despite agreeing to the interview, Dave doesn’t really trust the process or the claims of creating a version of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation commission where, as earnest mic-wielding Emily explains, “combatants could tell their stories and victims could receive some closure.” (Ranson perfectly captures the self-righteousness and eagerness of a young academic.) Her Emily seems blind to the idea that there might be victims on both sides. Or, as Dave puts it, “The problem you’re missing is that for a truth and reconciliation commission to work, people need to tell the truth.” And Dave for one remains suspicious of the Irish, particularly what he calls the “fucking reptiles” who aligned with the rebel Irish Republican Army.
Over time, it emerges that Dave has an ulterior motive to agree to the interview — to gain access to the tapes that Emily has already recorded in hopes of identifying those responsible for Bobby’s death. That leads to a remarkable second-act encounter between Dave and a divorced coffee shop owner named Sonia, played with a sassy forthrightness by Samantha Mathis. Their scenes are charged with an energy that is both erotic and menacing, fueled by the feeling of second chances in life that can seem to rare for middle-aged people but become that much more urgent as a result. Is this a last crack at romance, or the fulfillment of a long-gestating revenge plot? Can it be both? Hayden and Mathis masterfully play their interactions with an authenticity in which you can see both their ardor and their hesitation in pursuing their star-crossed goals.
McGann ramps up the tension to an ending that is both shockingly unexpected and yet feels absolutely right. But at nearly two and a half hours, The Honey Trap runs too long to build up and sustain the suspense to its crackerjack finale — and the scenes of Dave wavering on his plan, and steeling his resolve with the help of Bobby’s ghost, feel unnecessary. Indeed, many of the flashback and fantastical elements could be scaled back significantly to tighten the story. (Torney’s staging tends to turn more generic in these sequences, despite James Garver’s deliberately jarring sound design and Michael Gottlieb’s effective lighting.)
Hayden is mesmerizing as Dave, confident and combative one moment and then gradually revealing hidden depths of remorse and resignation as the story unfolds. Sharing his story — or as Emily would put it, “his truth” — really does seem to have a cathartic effect on the man. The Irish have always had a gift for spinning yarns, after all, and The Honey Trap underscores how hard it is to pin down something as subjectively elusive as the truth. ★★★★☆
THE HONEY TRAP
Irish Repertory Theatre, Off Broadway
Running time: 2 hours, 25 minutes (with 1 intermission)
Tickets on sale through November 9 for $60 to $125
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