‘Gunman’ hits bullseye at Allens Lane Theater

by HUGH HUNTER

The Shadow of a Gunman by Sean O’Casey, which opened last weekend at Allens Lane Theater in West Mt. Airy and is directed by John Gallagher of The Irish Repertory Theatre of Philadelphia, takes a compelling and caustic look at the Irish struggle for independence.

Gunman is set in a Dublin tenement where the poor try to live through the "Troubles.” Seamus Shields (Scott Robertson) is an itinerant peddler of pins and spoons. He rents a squalid tenement room with straw on the floor and clothes strewn all about.

Seamus lets his friend, Donal Davoren (Gene D’Alessandro), take up residence. Davoren is a politically uninvolved poet, but the false rumor spreads that he is actually that legendary Irish figure, "a gunman on the run.” Tenement dwellers begin to visit the room, one by one, like moths drawn to light.

The first is Mulligan (McKeever), a popinjay landlord who demands his rent and threatens eviction. Next up is Minnie Powell (Melissa Lynch), a fetching young woman who snuggles up to Davoren. Davoren cynically concludes that this gunman business has its good points, and with these two interesting visitors, we seem to have the makings of a plot.

Not so. What we get instead is a succession of visitors. But the Irish Repertory actors are marvelous, and each visit becomes a distinct, comic-tragic experience. Young Tommy Owens (Doug Greene) gives a prancing account of Republican fervor. Mrs. Henderson (Kate Danaher) is a nasty piece of flirtation and gossip. Mr. Gallogher (Steve Gulick) recites an honorific and Malaprop-filled letter to the Irish Republican Army, but what the quavering Gallogher really wants is to get IRA thugs to take care of some tenement ruffians.

Night falls, moonlight streams through the lattice window, and we begin to hear gunfire. But the visitors keep coming. The worried Mrs. Grigson (Gloria Salmansohn) and then husband Adolphus Grigson (John Cannon) arrive. Adolphus is an Orangeman, a braggart and a drunk. He struts and swears his loyalist allegiance in the name of King Billy. (In the end it does him little good.)

By all normal principles of dramaturgy, the Gunman ought to fail miserably, the usual fate of "slice of life" claptrap. Davoren is not a true protagonist, and there is very little plot. But the rules that apply to almost any other drama do not seem to apply here. The Gunman is compelling. In part our interest owes to the charm and self-deception of the visitors, the humor and poetry of their speech.

But even more so, we begin to feel the gathering storm outside. We begin to see that these folk are the flotsam of some great disaster, and at the same time, the creators of it. As the "Troubles" threaten to move indoors, the chanticleer men scramble. When the Gunman comes to its chilling denouement, O’Casey demonstrates that old saw: people get the politics they deserve. And we feel the truth of it.

Allens Lane Theater is located at Allens Lane and McCallum Street. The Shadow of a Gunman will run through Dec. 4. Reservations at 215-248-0546.