Pair of True Irish ‘Lovers’ Win and Lose With Humor, Irony

Brian Friel is probably better known in America than any other contemporary Irish playwright, through such hits as “Philadelphia, Here I Come” and the Tony-winning “Dancing at Lughnasa.” Both these plays are emotionally large and dramatically expansive. But it is in a couple of very small, interior plays that Friel best communicates that magical Gaelic sense of humor that the Irish blend so easily with a patina of slightly bitter irony.

“Winners” and “Losers” almost always are performed together under the umbrella title “Lovers,” currently the case at Orange Coast College’s Drama Lab, where the production is sensitive and often very funny.

“Winners,” the stronger piece, concerns a young couple, Mag and Joe, both 17 and about to graduate from grammar school, the equivalent of our high school. They meet on a hilltop above their village to study for final exams.

They are also studying their future: In three weeks they will be married. Mag is pregnant. Two narrators, male and female, describe Mag and Joe’s backgrounds, their families, their romance. The narrators also tell us (and this gives nothing away because the story is revealed early on) that after they leave the hilltop, Mag and Joe will take a boat out onto a neighboring lake and will drown.

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The narration provides the typical Irish irony, but the focus is totally on the young couple, who continue their sparking and their spatting, their juvenile high jinks and their tender reaching out to each other, long past our knowledge of their fate.

Amanda Helene Diaz and Alex LaVerde couldn’t be better as Mag and Joe. Whether sitting stiffly silent after an argument, or careening about the grassy knoll pretending to machine-gun and hand-grenade teachers and foes, they have a sure sense of the frolics and frowns that place their characters at the right age and in the right place.

The narrators have a thankless task, to read the facts dryly, like the Stage Manager in “Our Town,” but Steve Howe (alternating with Peter Kreder) and Shannon Birk (alternating with Kristina A. Davis) accomplish their ends with empathy, warmth and humor.

The second, shorter play, “Losers,” is another matter altogether. It tells a typical Irish joke, involving the late romance and marriage of a buoyant couple, Andy (Kelly A. Flynn) and Hanna (Shannon C. M. Flynn), under the tyrannical thumb of her domineering mother, and the tragic turn of their relationship when the pope de-canonizes the mother’s adored St. Filumena.

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Both Flynns revel in the very Irish comedy of their courting, sensual and passionate as he recites Gray’s “Elegy in a Country Churchyard” to keep the mother from knowing what they’re at. The actors are charmers, and they know the script’s territory well.

But Melissa Petro as the mother and Sheena Scot Christopher-Roundy as her uptight friend Cissy are much too nice and smiling for what should be bitter harridans. Nor have they been able to surmount the age difference between themselves and their characters.

Director Alex Golson’s rhythms are just right for both pieces, gentle and summery in “Winners” and bright and kinetic in “Losers.” He also hears the poetry in Friel’s writing and respects the fine Irish line between a smile and a tear.

* “Lovers,” Drama Lab, Orange Coast College, 2701 Fairview Road, Costa Mesa. Thursday through Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 2 p.m. Ends Sunday. $6-$9. (714) 432-5880. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.

Amanda Helene Diaz: Mag

Alex LaVerde: Joe

Steve Howe: Man

Shannon Birk: Woman

Kelly A. Flynn: Andy Tracy

Shannon C.M. Flynn: Hanna

Sheena Scot Christopher-Roundy: Cissy Cassidy

Melissa Petro: Mrs. Wilson

An Orange Coast College department of theater arts production of plays by Brian Friel, directed by Alex Golson. Assistant director: Jennifer Green. Technical direction/sound design: David Scaglione. Lighting design: Brock Cilley. Stage manager: Trysha Le.