A bloodthirsty father (Niall Buggy, from left) encourages his sons — Aaron Monaghan (center, standing), Garrett Lombard, and Gavin Drea — to perpetrate violence in “A Whistle in the Dark,” part of Tom Murphy’s punishingly dark Irish trilogy. (Catherine Ashmore)
There’s no getting around the unrelenting misery of “DruidMurphy.” Made up of three plays by Irish playwright Tom Murphy — unknown in the US but much admired at home — this is one of the most uncompromisingly grim events of the year. Benefiting from a very good production by Galway’s Druid Theatre for the Lincoln Center Festival, it’s easier to admire than to love.
You can buy individual tickets for “Conversations on a Homecoming” (1985), “A Whistle in the Dark” (1961) and “Famine” (1968). Or you can see the company of 16 perform all three in a 9 1/2-hour marathon that gets bleaker and bleaker as time crawls by.
Written over 25 years, the plays weren’t conceived as a trilogy, but director Garry Hynes (“The Beauty Queen of Leenane,” “DruidSynge”) exposes how they paint a devastating portrait of people pushed into self-destruction. The only choice they have is between leaving and staying, but it almost doesn’t matter because they’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t.
In “Conversations,” Michael (Marty Rea) drops by his hometown on a visit from New York. As he and his old friends down drink after drink in a colorless pub, it’s not long before Michael’s former best mate, Tom (Garrett Lombard), starts spewing self-righteous resentment.
But as accomplished as the staging and acting are, it’s hard to care for any of the characters — it just seems as if we’re stuck with a bunch of guys whose steady drinking makes them either maudlin or aggressive.
Much better is “Whistle,” if only for Niall Buggy’s searing performance as a vicious father who eggs on his five sons toward violence. Marty Rea plays another Michael, one who’s trying to find a better life, this time in England. Inevitably, he’s sucked back into his family’s foul circle, sacrificing his hopes and the love of his English wife, Betty (the sterling Eileen Walsh).
Murphy’s characters love the sound of their own voices, especially while intoxicated. No surprise, then, that all the shows are on the long side, and at 2 1/2 hours, “Whistle” plods along.
Interestingly, the play that illuminates the roots of this dysfunction is presented last.
Set in 1846, under English rule and during the potato blight, “Famine” is nearly three hours of horror — it starts with a burial and goes downhill from there.
By then, the set is down to a mound of dirt against a backdrop of corrugated iron. While the English masters are in period drag, the desperate Irish villagers stagger around in modern rags, looking like both humans and zombies in “The Walking Dead.”
And to think that what they had to look forward to — according to Murphy’s law — was more uprooting, more drinking, more violence.