“In this business, there are so many negatives, so many seemingly insurmountable problems, and out of the blue comes this marvelous moment.” Carmel O’Reilly, artistic director of Boston’s Súgán Theater is sipping tea in her Cambridge home, and is uncharacteristically still. Over the past eight years, she has dedicated herself to bringing new Irish plays to Boston. O’Reilly has directed and produced the majority of the works at Súgán, including the critically acclaimed St. Nicholas, by Conor McPherson, which is being remounted at the American Repertory Theatre this month as part of their New Stages Program.
St. Nicholas, a one-man show, is the story of a jaded Dublin theater critic, who finds himself besotted by a young actress and walks away from his ordinary life into a series of bizarre events. It is a macabre, funny story of obsession, seduction, entrapment, and blood. The Súgán production received an avalanche of high praise–as did Richard McElvain, who stars–when it ran last fall at the Boston Center for the Arts. “A small miracle of a play,” proclaimed Bay Windows. “The most rewarding theatrical experience in the area!” added Ed Siegal, lead critic at The Boston Globe.
Robert Orchard, managing director of the American Repertory Theatre, agrees. “A number of people on the staff here, including Robert Brustein, saw the show and had high regard for it. It was well received, but constrained by a limited run. We thought it was a good idea to provide an opportunity for further performances,” explains Orchard. “There was an extraordinary interplay between the audience and the performer that you rarely see. I hope we can capture the same exchange.”
Moving the play from the original 90-seat house at the BCA Black Box to the more spacious 300-seat Hasty Pudding presents a challenge to the production team. Retaining the intimacy is O’Reilly’s biggest concern. “In collaboration with Michael Griggs, our set designer, we’ve affected a solution. We are actually removing seats so that Richard can move into the audience. We’ll build the set and continue it down into the house. The piece moves freely between theater stories and dramatic monologues. In this way, he can literally move between intimacy and theatricality.”
