If all you knew of Ireland came from plays, you’d think it was a nation of underemployed eccentrics who loved spinning tales — and arguing — in florid language. Also, they drink a lot.
If anybody but Irish writers came up with this stuff, they’d be accused of peddling stereotypes. Yet, it’s part and parcel of the Emerald Isle mystique, at least as represented on the New York stage.
Dublin’s Conor McPherson has written a lot about troubled folks who like a pint or 20 — one of his most famous plays, “The Weir,” even takes place in a pub.
Yet, while alcohol features in the new “The Night Alive,” this time it’s more tangential, even if old man Maurice (McPherson regular Jim Norton, late of “The Seafarer”) does get drunk at 4 o’clock in the afternoon.
“You’re pissed as a goat, girl,” his middle-aged nephew, Tommy (Ciarán Hinds), points out.
Actually, it’s Tommy, not Maurice, who’s meant to be the biggest loser here, at least on the surface.
Separated from his wife and kids, Tommy rents a sad, cluttered room from his uncle and scrapes by doing odd jobs with his hangdog buddy, Doc (Michael McElhatton).
Yet Tommy’s also the show’s heart and soul. Hinds occasionally goes overboard, as we saw in the recent revival of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” (he was Big Daddy) and on TV’s “Political Animals” (as a Bill Clinton-type former president).
But, here, the hulking actor underplays beautifully — like the rest of the excellent cast, all brought in from the London production. He’s especially touching in his tentative, bumbling interactions with Caoilfhionn Dunne’s quiet Aimee, whom Tommy brings back to his squalid room after her boyfriend beats her.
Aimee thanks Tommy with a little manual action, for which he gratefully pays her. “I’d take care of myself, only I have repetitive strain injury,” he says.
McPherson, who also directed, keeps things moving fleetly. This is a great improvement over his sluggish earlier shows, especially since not all that much happens — except, that is, when Aimee’s boyfriend, a bearded psycho named Kenneth (Brian Gleeson), turns up.
For a few tense minutes, while he swings a hammer, it feels as if we’re in a Martin McDonagh play — maybe an outtake from “The Lieutenant of Inishmore.”
McPherson is more compassionate, though, and “The Night Alive” ends on a gentle note. The conclusion seems a bit tacked on, and maybe not entirely credible. But by then, we’ve grown so attached to Tommy that, like him, we want to believe.