Galway bound

SHOVE IT UP YER FARCE Walworth’s cast wags the dog.

Photo: Robert Day

By now the story’s familiar: In the mid-’70s, three schoolmates resist the lure of the nation’s cultural center to form a small repertory company at home. Surviving its early struggles, the group finds a permanent space and develops a following for its intensely acted productions of both classics and new works. After 30 years, it’s recognized as a national treasure, enjoying international acclaim along with successful Broadway runs: Some consider it the country’s preeminent ensemble. The company’s come a long way but still honors the vision of founding members Garry Hynes, Marie Mullen and Mick Lally.

Wait, where’s Gary Sinise? It may sound like Steppenwolf, but the troupe in question is Ireland’s Druid Theatre Company. Hailing from the western city of Galway, Druid built an early reputation on its productions of Synge and Brecht and its long-running association with Irish playwright Tom Murphy. The company attracted significant attention on this side of the Atlantic in 1996, when it launched the career of Martin McDonagh with its production of The Beauty Queen of Leenane, nominated for a Tony when it came to New York. For the last three years, Druid’s been on the road once more, touring a new work by its current associated playwright, Enda Walsh.

Now at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater as part of its World’s Stage Series, The Walworth Farce is an intricate mousetrap, blending madcap comedy with a dark undercurrent: Think Noises Off scripted by the early Pinter. While Walsh, 42, wrote the 2006 play in four weeks, the initial inspiration arose 12 years earlier, during the run of his first London production, Disco Pigs. “It was dying a death, people absolutely hating it, and I was suffering from panic attacks,” the voluble writer recalls in a phone interview from London.

Adopting a strict habit of daily walks, he was struck by an immigrant Irish family, always in the same pose as he passed their window (an older man and woman standing, facing their seated son). To explore the image, Walsh set himself to writing a play about Irish emigration, through he viewed the genre as “the worst type of Irish play: guys sitting in pubs drinking beer, reminiscing about their homeland.”

That kind of perverse curiosity comes naturally to a playwright who considers theater “such a mad medium. It’s ridiculously stupid. All this pretending, people in fucking ridiculous costumes, and yet the audience needs to dream, and I love that.” Recently, the Dublin native, whose elaborately structured and wickedly cruel constructions include Bedbound and The New Electric Ballroom, has begun branching out into film. He scripted the award-winning Hunger, about IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands, and is adapting his play Chatroom for Ringu director Hideo Nakata, who, like Walsh, recently became a father.

“It’s made Nakata more fearful of the world,” Walsh observes. “But I do believe in humanity. People who see my plays say, ‘What? Are you serious?’ But—it sounds so fucking liberal and poncey of me—I do think human life has meaning and beauty, even if people are mostly fucking miserable shitheads.”

The freshness of Walsh’s vision and language is what initially attracted Chicago Shakespeare’s Criss Henderson, who saw the play when it was the breakout hit of the 2007 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. “It’s shocking how new it is,” Henderson says, praising the Druid production’s handling of the complex piece. “They’re a thrilling company,” he adds, “more like a Chicago theater group than any other we’ve brought in.”

That connection is apparent to actor Tadhg Murphy, who plays Sean, the immigrant family’s youngest son, in Druid’s Walworth. “While we were in New York, I saw August: Osage County,” Murphy says. “It was one of the best things I’ve ever seen.” Walsh also cites August when he notes, “These American actors are so brave, so physical—and Irish actors have that, too. The Druid actors are burning it onstage, and I hope some of these great Chicago physical actors come to see it.”

The Walworth Farce runs through Sunday 1.

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