‘A Man of No Importance’ – Based on the film, ‘A Man of No Importance’. Lyrics by Lynn Ahrens; Music by Stephen Flaherty; Book by Terrence McNally; Directed by Paul Daigneault. Choreographed by Ilyse Robbins. Music direction by Paul S. Katz. Presented by SpeakEasy Stage Company. At the Roberts Studio Theatre, Calderwood Pavilion, Boston Center for the Arts, through March 22.
By Mike Hoban
For the final show of a thirty-plus year career as the founder & artistic director of Boston’s SpeakEasy Stage Company, it’s interesting to note that Paul Daigneault chose the small but quietly beautiful A Man of No Importance for his final production. Producer and/or director of over 160 productions and winner of multiple Eliot Norton and IRNE Awards, Daigneault is equally adept at drama and musicals, including the mind-blowing two-part The Inheritance in 2022 and a slew of terrific musicals, the most recent being the Eliot Norton Award-winning The Band’s Visit. So it should probably come as no surprise that his final selection straddles the two genres.
Although the show has plenty of memorable numbers, A Man of No Importance is more of a play with music than a traditional musical, and given the ill political winds blowing in the direction of the LGBTQ community, sadly, it couldn’t be more timely. Set in Dublin in 1964, it’s the story of Alfie Byrne (Eddie Shields) – a closeted middle-aged bus porter who lives with his sister. He has reached a tipping point in his life where he can no longer suppress the “the love that dare not speak its name” for his friend and co-worker, the hunky Robbie (BU grad Keith Robinson). It’s the sin of not being true to oneself that lies at the core of this wonderfully told and darkly funny Irish story. Bolstered by its witty and heartfelt score and propelled by an all-hands-on-deck approach to musical accompaniment, Daigneault and Speakeasy create the rarest of productions – a musical where the book and the music come together as a seamless whole.
The story begins in the present, where Alfie is told by the parish priest (David Rabinow) that not only has his theater troupe’s production of Salome been canceled – because it has been judged “a dirty play” by the parish elders – but that the St. Imelda Players have been barred from ever performing there again. This sends Alfie reeling into flashback mode, and the life-changing events leading up to his present dilemma unfold before us as if he himself were in a play.
The players in Alfie’s theater group are also the passengers on his bus route every morning, and when Adele (rising star Rebekah Rae Robles), a troubled but pretty young woman who joins the regulars one day, Alfie convinces her to play the title role in his group’s production of Salome. An elated Alfie tells his sister Lily (Aimee Doherty) that he’s found a girl, and she rejoices and bursts into song with the joyous “Burden of Life” – until he tells her that it’s not a romance; he’s just found an actress for the play. She becomes furious – and with good reason. Lily has been delaying marriage to her longtime suitor, Mr. Carney (Sam Simahk) until Alfie finds the “right girl.”
One night, walking home after rehearsal, Alfie and Adele attempt to share the pain of their “dark” secrets – or at least ones considered dark by the standards of 1964 Irish society, five years before Stonewall in the U.S. and well before single motherhood was acceptable in oppressively Catholic Ireland. So when Adele tells Alfie “people can be harsh judges,” he makes a cryptic attempt to come out to her, but she doesn’t understand, and as he sings the moving “Love Who You Love” to comfort her, he begins to gain insight into his own situation. (Side note: It’s interesting that in a play where Alfie is shunned and humiliated for being who he is, he has no issue with passing judgment on Adele for getting pregnant out of wedlock or another character for having an extramarital affair later in the play.) Later, at the urging of his spirit guide, Oscar Wilde (Will McGarrahan, whose flamboyant Wilde costume inexplicably made him look more like a Batman villain than a dandy), Alfie does gather the courage to act on his instincts – with disastrous results.
Daigneault has cast a combination of Boston theater stalwarts (Shields, McGarrahan, Doherty, Simahk, Kathy St. George, Jennifer Ellis, plus Kerry Dowling and Billy Melendy, who appeared in the previous staging of this work in 2003 for Speakeasy that Daigneault directed) with many appearing in smaller supporting roles. He also cast relative newcomers Robinson and Robles, and the melding of new and seasoned talent works exquisitely. Doherty, one of Boston’s premier musical actors, delivers a wonderfully dark comic performance as Alfie’s sister (“Who keeps putting these notions in your head, Alfie? It’s a blessing that our parents are dead.”). Ellis returns to Speakeasy in the role of Mrs. Patrick and blows the audience away with a rendition of “Our Father” that is reminiscent of a young Sinead O’Connor, and Robinson leads the cast in the show-stopping “The Streets of Dublin” (“Art is for old fogies, Alfie,” he says. “Rock ‘n Roll” is the future.”) and the number does, indeed, rock.
But it is the performance of Shields (who has worked extensively with Daigneault and considers him a mentor) that is at the heart of this show. Known to Boston audiences as one of our finest dramatic actors, he handles the musical numbers unspectacularly but ably from a vocal standpoint but brings a real vulnerability to numbers like the outstanding “Man in the Mirror” and “Love Who You Love.” Nearly all of the actors join the four-piece band in playing instruments (Robles on violin, St. George on accordion, McGarrahan on piano, Meagan Lewis-Michelson on clarinet, and Rabinow and Simahk on guitars), creating a real sense of community within the play itself.
The production is almost Capra-esque, and like the Frank Capra films (It’s a Wonderful Life, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington), there’s a substantial emotional and physical price to be paid by the play’s protagonists before we reach the play’s life-affirming ending.
This production of A Man of No Importance is not only a fitting end to Daigneault’s brilliant career at Speakeasy; it’s a celebration of life that carries a message of hope as we plunge headlong into what will presumably be the country’s darkest hours for our most vulnerable people. For more information and tickets, go to: www.SpeakEasyStage.com
