STAGE REVIEW : ‘Gunman’ Is Off-Target at Ivar Theatre

Friday was a night of many firsts in Hollywood.

It was the first time that the Ivar Theatre, acquired last year by the Inner City Cultural Center, hosted the run of a play since 1974.

It was the first time An Claidheamh Soluis (the Celtic subtitle for the Celtic Arts Center) moved a show to an Equity venue: “The Shadow of a Gunman” to the Ivar.

It was the first time that the number of legit stages open for business near Hollywood and Vine totaled--count ‘em--seven: James A. Doolittle, Henry Fonda, Pantages, West Coast Ensemble, Stella Adler, Theatre/Theater and Ivar.

It was the first time in memory that legit theater was the reason there was no place to park. The scramble for a spot was so acute, and lot prices so steep (as high as $8), that Friday’s $5 curbside valet parking for the “Gunman” proved a lifesaver and a bargain.

Who would have dreamed it?

Whatever the frustrations of getting there, the festive Friday mood at Selma and Ivar could not be dampened--not with the Guinness flowing and with the pre-show piping, fiddling, strumming, singing and dancing on stage.

If it tended to have an air of slightly forced expectation, it was probably due to all that “firstness”--an occasion marked by short congratulatory speeches (including one from Al Nodal, head of the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department) about the joys of seeing the neat little Ivar Theatre rescued from nudie shows and restored to its original, livelier purpose.

By 8:30 p.m., the reveling ceded to the main event: Sean O’ Casey’s “The Shadow of a Gunman,” first mounted at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre in 1923, but written about life in a 1920 strife-torn tenement of Dublin. The Easter Week Rebellion of 1916 had left a wake of so many factional struggles for independence that no one knew who was friend, foe, right, wrong or who could be fully trusted.

In a kind of mock-Irish “You Can’t Take It With You,” we meet the inhabitants of the crumbling house in O’Casey’s playful first act, and, through them, catch glimpses of the politics of the day.

There is the poet Donal Davoren (Barry Lynch), his frisky roommate Seumas (Brian oh-Eachtuigheirn, who also directed), and a parade of neighbors that includes the chatty Mrs. Henderson (Dolly Martin), young Tommy Owens (Tim Ruddy) and Minnie Powell (Karen Kahler), a pretty girl with a crush on Donal, whom she believes to be a gunman. Flattered by that assumption, Donal does nothing to deny it.

Act II takes place at night. It has its share of humor, with an uproarious drunk scene involving the downstairs neighbor Grigson (an excellent Billy Woods) and his wife (Robin Howard), but it has its share of darkening tensions too.

The place is raided. When craven Donal finds a bag of bombs in his room, left there by an IRA man earlier in the day, he panics. It’s the quiet Minnie, anxious to save him, who removes them--with tragic results. If the tragedy speaks for itself, O’Casey doesn’t let it. “Gunman” isn’t long, but it is explicit.

And not badly done here, if unevenly cast and sometimes weak in the seams. Notable are the wiry oh-Eachtuigheirn and the hilarious Woods, Howard as his loving and worldwise missus, and Lynch as the detached Davoren. The balance of the cast is adequate, at times passionate, but too often inexperienced.

Nearly 70 years old, the play itself has lost little of its power and none of its relevance (alas) or humor, but the production suffers from the theater’s echo-y acoustics and the amateurishness in those peripheral roles. Tempo and rhythm pick up considerably in Act II, which is clearer, tighter, stronger and benefits from the professionalism of oh-Eachtuigheirn, Lynch, Howard and Woods.

Clara Rausch’s costumes are on target and Richard Scully’s setting accurate and unkempt. But Terry Enroth’s lights are fitful, seldom on cue and rarely differentiate enough between day and night. The acoustical mushiness also makes it harder to understand the various densities of brogue.

Can this revival survive? Realistically speaking, not long, given its weaknesses. A program note calls on the public to assist in “the task of awakening the sleeping giant that is Celtic America.” Putting this “Gunman” in an Equity Theatre may be perceived as part of that process, but it’s at best a risky artistic decision whose bravery, in the true Irish spirit of the play, borders more on temerity.