By Samuel L. Leiter . . .

The Irish Repertory Theater, which remained present via streaming services during the darkest days of the pandemic, returns to live theatre with Irish novelist Kevin Barry’s first play, Autumn Royal, presented on its Francis J. Greenburger Mainstage. The kind of offbeat, intimate two-hander that might have been more comfortable in the company’s basement studio theatre, Autumn Royal (which premiered in Ireland in 2017) blends realism and surrealism in a mostly gloomy, fitfully amusing, seventy-minute black comedy. The subject: siblings in their late thirties trapped with the burden of caring for a mentally ill father. It’s one of many similarly themed plays for which this age of Alzheimer’s and dementia will be remembered.

John Keating

Charlie Corcoran has designed an oppressively tiny room in Cork, Ireland, its main features a seriously battered old table and a couple of chairs; what purports to be a staircase set into the upstage wall, however, more closely resembles a bookcase. Here we meet brother Timothy (John Keating) and sister May (Maeve Higgins), contemplating their caretaking burdens, cracking wise at the expense of the locals (not to mention their dad’s condition), and otherwise nattering about their memories, sometimes of their long-vanished mother, “who went out for a packet of Bird’s custard and never came back.” Their brogues, however, thick as an Irish bog, too often make it hard to make out just what it is they’re talking about. 

Costumer China Lee dresses Timmy in buttoned, plaid shirt and chinos, and May in black track pants and a black sequined tank top, a surprising choice specifically called for by Barry. The glittery upper half of her ensemble suggests she’d rather be anywhere but here.

John Keating & Maeve Higgins

To May and Timmy’s discomfort, a poem their father has been writing for six months never goes any further than the line, “A duck walk across a puddle.” His verbal stasis seems symbolic of their own existential one. When dad’s blood work suggests that he may be longer for this world—even decades longer—than Timmy and May had hoped for, they start to consider ways out of an impossible situation. After all, if things continue as they are, Timmy will never realize his pipe dream of moving to Australia where he can work in a financial institution and spend his free time surfing. As if.

Autumn Royal, a nursing home, appears to be the best solution. (We take it on faith they can afford it, despite apparently not having any jobs other than caretaking for their father.) Things at the old folks home don’t turn out as planned and, in desperation, Timmy even riffs about “the pillow-over-the-face job.”

John Keating & Maeve Higgins

Autumn Royal is a thinly plotted effort, dependent more on language and atmosphere than dramatic tension. Its hopelessly hopeful characters are reminiscent of Gogo and Didi in Waiting for Godot; you may also get a whiff of Tennessee Williams’ The Two-Character Play. The speeches shift from snappy dialogue to long, fantasy-infused monologues, their visual and aural support coming from Michael Gottlieb’s artful, shadowy lighting, Ryan Rumery’s sulky music, and Rumery and Hidenori Nakajo’s weird sound design. Also effective are moments when heavy pounding on the ceiling suggests it’s going to collapse; at one point, in fact, powdered plaster actually falls on cue. And a boom box sometimes punctuates the action by playing “Zoom” by Fat Larry’s Band, a tune that brings the siblings back to happier days. Dan Scully’s projections deserve special mention, among them a recurring video of swirling water, combined with a loud mechanical rumble, turning the stage into a washing machine that suggests May and Timmy’s inner turmoil. 

Unfortunately, as directed by the usually reliable Ciarán O’Reilly, the performances come off as just that, performances. Keating and Higgins, both expert actors, deliver the lines with floridly colorful flair but they too frequently seem to be talking more to us than to one another, Keating especially. Vivid stage presences are not a substitution for human sincerity and suffering. 

John Keating & Maeve Higgins

For all its feisty commentary, there’s a touching story somewhere in Autumn Royal, of the devotion of loving children, even feckless ones, to a mentally declining parent; of the horrors of aging ungracefully, particularly when mentally ill; of the distasteful things caregivers must do for their ailing loved ones; and so forth. But while these are obviously present in Autumn Royal, they get muffled in the barrage of linguistic gamesmanship and performative momentum. 

The Irish Rep is back but it’s not yet cooking on all burners.

Autumn Royal. Through November 21 at the Irish Repertory Theatre (132 West 22nd Street, between Sixth and Seventh Avenues). www.irishrep.org 

Photos: Carol Rosegg