Review: Parcel From America, Irish Schtick in a Box

Attending a new musical is a bit like receiving a package in the mail. The anticipation is high, as is the potential for delight and disappointment. Sadly, we’re left with more of the latter at the conclusion of Parcel From America, now making its New York premiere at Theatre Row.

Subtitled “the Irish Musical” and based on a story by Tomáseen Foley, it takes place in the 1950s in Teampall an Ghleanntáin, a small community in West County Limerick where everyone’s last name is “Kelly” and (almost) everyone is terminally jolly. They daily await the arrival of postman Davey (Michael Mellamphy), hoping that he’s carrying an envelope full of dollars or a parcel of gifts from the emigrant Kellys in Massachusetts. That is, everyone except the saintly Bridget (Alex Sharpe, swathed in cloth and tears like the Virgin Mary), who has scrimped and saved to purchase a brand-new bicycle for her dotey son Liam Óg (Ethan Jack Haberfield), the town jerk.

Haberfield does a fine job in this princess track, adding the only hint of spice to an otherwise bland affair. “I hate cabbage,” he proclaims, stomping offstage. Grandmother Kelly (Úna Clancy, witchy and severe) is certain the fairies snatched the real boyo away in infancy, leaving a cruel changeling in his place—which is one way to explain the development of a personality.

We’re unsurprised when he flees this Mumhanach answer to Brigadoon, a place where you cannot fart without the priest (Daniel Patrick Sullivan) and the postman broadcasting an opinion to the whole town. He later turns up in Springfield, information the next-door neighbors learn through what seems to be an international network of Irish spies. It falls on young Sean (Aidan McCraken) to break the news to Bridget. Sensing the old woman’s grief, he assures her that Liam Óg is thinking about her and will absolutely send her a parcel come Christmas. Everyone in the village braces for an epic letdown, with Grandmother Kelly tutting, “Seanin. What have you done?”

It’s thin broth for a two-hour musical drama, leaving one hoping for at least one misshapen potato or gray bit of meat. The closest we get to something dramatically interesting is a second act duet that our narrator (Michael Grennell, wistfully playing a grown-up version of Sean) sings with his unwitting father (Gregg Goodbrod, convincingly portraying a sensitive man thrust into the role of stern patriarch). As Dad prays and frets about poverty, Sean lets him know that he now understands the burden he lived under, and he’s grateful for the opportunities he had that Dad never enjoyed. It’s a therapist’s exercise to exorcise daddy issues, but at least it’s something.

Unfortunately, the book (by Jahnna Beecham, Malcolm Hillgartner, and Michael J. Hume) suffers from too many underdeveloped characters and an A-plot centered on a completely predictable question: How will the good people of Teampall an Ghleanntáin save Bridget from death by disappointment? They tell us in the first few minutes of the show:

“In the shelter of our neighbors
Lies the heart of where we live
And the fruit of all our labors
Is the gift we have to give.”

This opening number is meant to serve the same purpose as “Tradition” from Fiddler on the Roof, but without the subsequent dramatic complications wrought by encroaching modernity, nor any whiff of melodic development.

The music (by Hillgartner and Kevin Corcoran) is pleasantly mild and repetitive, with lyrics (by the book team) to match. When it comes to her belief that faeries are to blame for Bridget’s woes, Grandmother sings that she is, “As sure as you’re / sitting there in front of me / you can be sure / that’s how sure ye can be.” It’s one of this show’s more memorable lyrics.

J.R. Sullivan directs the production with tonal levity and physical stiffness, with the cast regularly arrayed in a semicircle performing Barry McNabb’s generic choreography of céilí circles and box steps. Harry Feiner’s set, ivy climbing on stone walls in front of an idyllic painted backdrop, evokes the postcard charm of rural Ireland as well as the Potemkin artifice of the script. Debbi Hobson appropriately costumes the cast in muted colors and sundry knitwear. Projection designer Joey Moro even treats the audience to a white Christmas, a little gift to a gentle people accustomed to wearing woolen cardigans soaked in rain.

Despite all its flaws, Parcel From America is impossible to hate. It’s the musical equivalent of a tin of shortbread cookies: sweet and unadventurous, you put them in a Christmas care package to tell someone, I’m thinking about you, but not very hard.