THEATER REVIEW : Paul Ronan Electrifies as ‘Public Enemy’

James Cagney became famous playing tough guys, then later graduated into a song-and-dance star. Tommy Black idolizes Cagney, but he moves his own career in the opposite direction--from hoofer to thug.

Tommy, who lives in perilous Belfast in the mid-’80s, actually has no job, let alone a career. But after long hours watching Cagney videos, he has found a calling: to re-create the great Cagney roles in his own dreary life, to reach the “top of the world” as Cagney’s gangster did in “White Heat”--in a fatal burst of glory.

This isn’t hard to do in Belfast. Or in Los Angeles, 10 years later.

Kenneth Branagh wrote this fascinating character for himself to play in 1987, before he became a star. But the role remains an electrifying one in the hands of Paul Ronan, now playing Tommy in “Public Enemy” at the Court Theatre.

Ronan begins with an uncanny impersonation of Cagney’s George M. Cohan in the title number of “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” as performed by Tommy in a talent show at a Protestant bar and social club in Belfast. Tommy wins the contest and begins to romance the runner-up (Jenny Conroy), who has done a Tammy Wynette imitation.

The two of them and the club bartender (Brian D’Arcy James), a longtime chum of Tommy’s, immediately make plans to stage their next Cagney scene. Tommy’s widowed mother (Judy Geeson) tolerates all of this, but his straight-arrow brother Robert (David Adkins) asks prickly questions about the usefulness and the costs of Tommy’s obsession.

Yet none of the others suspects how far Tommy wants to go in re-creating his favorite Cagney characters. With Catholic and Protestant gangs controlling the streets, behaving much like the more mercenary bandits in the Cagney movies, Tommy’s imagination doesn’t have to work overtime to create a scenario that allows him to play “Public Enemy” as well as he played “Yankee Doodle Dandy.”

For the most part, Branagh ingeniously intertwines reflections about the value and the dangers of movie fantasies in the sodden lives of the unemployed. The only misstep is an overextended and ham-fisted narration by a cop (Ronan Carr) who’s looking back on the Black case. Although he may clarify the issues, he interrupts the rat-a-tat rhythms.

Some Americans may find the accents a bit thick, but it’s never hard to figure out what’s going on--and Tommy speaks in an American accent, a la Cagney, half the time anyway.

Nye Heron’s staging, Lawrence Oberman’s noir- influenced lighting and a gallery of superb supporting performances serve the play well. But it’s Ronan’s star turn that keeps everyone watching, just as Cagney himself could make the most unsavory characters irresistibly charismatic.

* “Public Enemy,” Court Theatre, 722 N. La Cienega Blvd., Los Angeles. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 and 7 p.m. Ends July 2. $22.50-$25. (213) 466-1767. Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes.