Superb performances put wind in the sails of "The Seafarer"

on January 11, 2009 at 3:09 PM, updated January 13, 2009 at 5:18 PM
In "The Seafarer," Mr. Lockhart (Denis Arndt) regards his quarry, an Irish ne'er-do-well called Sharky (Bill Geisslinger), with both contempt and envy.
Holiday socializing can be tricky. You're pretty much obligated by seasonal spirit to welcome in anyone, even acquaintances you don't actually like. And if they bring total strangers along, too, well, anything's liable to happen.

So it is in the Conor McPherson play "The Seafarer," which opened Friday night in a brilliantly acted production at Artists Repertory Theatre. It's Christmas Eve in a squalid suburban-Dublin house where Sharky Harkin has come to take care of his recently blinded brother, Richard. Sharky's upset that Richard has invited Nicky, a shallow gadabout who's taken up with Sharky's ex. But it is Mr. Lockhart, the incongruously dapper gent who shows up with Nicky, whom Sharky eyes warily as soon as they enter.

Maybe it's the red scarf. Or how much this stranger seems to know about Sharky's life. Or perhaps his unnerving stare and sly smile, the way he seems sweet, smug and sinister all at once.

"Who are you again?" Sharky asks him later, when the others have left the room. He won't say his real name, but neither does he leave any doubt. "I'm the son of the morning, Sharky. I'm the snake in the garden. I've come here for your soul."

The stakes are high -- and considering the whiskey and beer being consumed, so are the players-- during the pivotal poker game in Conor McPherson's "The Seafarer." Artist Rep's fine production features (clockwise from left) Leif Norby, Denis Arndt, Todd Van Voris, Tobias Andersen and Bill Geisslinger.

Well, at least he's honest.

And sportsmanlike, too. He'll join the poker game with Nicky, Sharky, Richard and their friend Ivan, tossing his euros on the table -- and tossing back drink after drink after drink -- like the rest of them. Only he and Sharky know the true stakes.

"The Seafarer"

When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday, 2 p.m. Sunday through Feb. 15, plus 11 a.m. Jan. 28 and Feb. 4

Where: Artists Repertory Theatre, 1515 S.W. Morrison St.

Tickets: $20-$47, 503-241-1278 or online

Web site:

It's fitting that Mr. Lockhart relishes card games on Christmas Eve, the last stand of darkness before the arrival of the savior (not to mention longer days). Both damnation and redemption, McPherson seems to suggest, are gambles.

What's no gamble at all is this play, which won acclaim in recent years at the National Theater in London and then on Broadway. McPherson's writing is rich with dark humor, observations about family and friendship and everyday human failings. It's threaded, too, with fascinating social and theological implications: the way whiskey-sodden Richard's war against the neighborhood winos echoes Protestant/Catholic enmity; that the characters closest to faith and redemption are blind, whether literally, practically (as in blind-drunk) or psychologically.

The winning hand here, though, is a first-rate cast, assembled and directed by Allen Nause. Oregon Shakespeare Festival veteran Bill Geisslinger's Sharky seems coiled and cornered even before he knows eternity is on the line; despite an outward calm, anger, frustration and remorse are ever-threatening to break out through his curt, flat speech and nervously twitching legs. As Lockhart, Denis Arndt, a founder of Seattle's Intiman Theatre, effects the awkward grace of someone trapped between the celestial and the mundane. He walks as if Lockhart, uncomfortable in a borrowed form, finds the human knee a vaguely ridiculous mechanism. And the subtle shifts in his otherworldly mien manage to suggest the various ways in which he is both villain and victim.

The face-off between Sharky and Lockhart is what drives the story, but there's great dimension and texture in the surrounding characters. Tobias Andersen nails the irascible, waggish charm in Richard, a filthy old drunk who's emotionally manipulative but stubbornly loyal and optimistic. As if Andersen's scabrous performance weren't funny enough -- and for all the weightiness of it's main narrative thrust, the play is frequently a hoot -- Artists Rep company member Todd Van Voris continues his string of indelible characters here as the good-natured Ivan. Van Voris comes closest of anyone to playing a familiarly blurry-eyed, tottering drunk, yet does so with such subtle and specific expressions that the effect is not of cliche but of endearing realism. Even Nicky, the least substantial character (which we know, in part, because he drinks Miller beer instead of Harp or Irish whiskey) is rendered, by Leif Norby with the sense of a full and distinct life.

None of these fellows, mind you, comes across as an ideal holiday guest. But whether you like them or not, you care about them because they're just like the rest of us: flawed creatures stumbling in the dark, yearning for a redemptive dawn.

Marty Hughley: 503-221-8383;