"An Irish Wake"
as reviewed by Aisle Say New York

COLIN QUINN: AN IRISH WAKE
Written by Colin Quinn and Lou SiMaggio
Directed by Bobby Moresco
Helen Hayes Theatre/ 240 West 44th Street / (212) 307-4100
Reviewed by David Spencer
In what is a modest, yet triumphant mix of stand-up comedy and playwrighting
for solo actor, writer-performer Colin Quinn (currently best known as the
satirical anchor of "Saturday Night Live"'s Weekend Update segment),
provides a deft look at an inner city subculture. In "An Irish Wake",
co-written with Lou Dimaggio, he reminisces--no doubt with fictional
touches--about growing up Catholic in Prospect Park of the 1970s.
The catalytic event, around which these reminiscences circle, is one which
brings together a number of assorted characters: the wake of Jackie Ryan, a
neighborhood icon who helped everybody. From all the evidence, they needed
all the help they could get. For they are a flawed--yet compellingly
human--bunch, as played and painted by Quinn.
He introduces and then mingles them in seven stages, each stage
metaphorically representing one of Catholicism's seven sacraments. The
sacrements are defined for us with scrupulous scholarship, though
occasionally not without editorial comment--such as the ritual of taking
communion, in which the wine and wafer, when ingested, become the body and
the blood of Christ. It is a conversion, Quinn tells us, "called
transubstantiation, and it exists in that place between the literal and
metaphor. And you're supposed to leave church and run with that."
Among the characters are Jimmy, the sidewalk philosopher, who berates the
stoop kids with stories of his own childhood. "We didn't steal. Never. Ever.
Ever. Once." The once, of course, is the once he got caught--by a father
whose discipline was so casually abusive that to this day, Jimmy can only
rationalize it as just.
There's also J.T., the neighborhood dealer; there's a matronly busybody
gossip; there's a fellow Quinn describes as "the neighborhood's first
liberal"; and an elder statesman whose specialty is to terrorize little boys
into his serving him drinks correctly ("Now listen to me, you little fuckin'
Rasputin. Do you not see the bottle over there with the man wearing a
dress?") whose memory of Jackie is typically colorful. The elder met the
deceased in a public restroom, where a drunk Jackie misaimed and pissed on
the elder's only footwear. When challenged--"How will I be gettin' a good
job without a decent pair o' shoes?"--Jackie offered to give the fellow a
job. "`But first you have to pass my placement test. First question: How do
you get along with the Guineas?' `I have no problem with 'em.'
`Congratulations. You're a long shoreman.'"
What's noteworthy about the different characters Quinn plays is that he
himself doesn't transform much; his rough voice stays roughly the same; and
save for donning the odd illustrative bit of costume and adjusting his
posture slightly--briefly--the essence of Quinn the narrator is always
starkly evident. For all that, each character is distinct, such is the
persuasiveness of the storytelling.
And what's most fascinating about the story is its undercurrent of
mournfulness--the play is its own wake, for a way of life that is dying. It
is a way of life full of such deep dysfunction that the logic of Quinn's
sorrow is inexplicable, in any academic sense. But the achievement of the
show is his ability to make you realize, on a level deeper than fact, that
for good or ill, all this...was home...

(Reprinted w/o Permission)