THEATER REVIEW: ‘Shining City’ @BeckCenter by Laura Kennelly

ShiningCity
Ursula Cataan & Adam Heffernan in “Shining City.” Photo by Kathy Sandham.

Through Sun May 1

Today one reaches out to a therapist instead of an exorcist after seeing a ghost? As it turns out maybe the old way was better, at least according to the latest Beck Center production, Shining City. Billed as a regional premiere, it’s directed by Bernadette Clemens.

The Beck’s snug Studio Theatre offers an appropriately claustrophobic setting for Irish playwright Conor McPherson’s exploration of neurotic obsession. Everything happens in Dublin therapist Ian’s office, a drab, mostly brown space with a partly visible bathroom just offstage.

As the play opens we watch Ian (Adam Heffernan) bustle about the office, clearly nervous, waiting for his first patient.

When that new patient, John (Robert Hawkes), blusters inside, it’s clear that he’s a depressed mess, fretting over the tragic death of his wife and even seeing her ghost. Perhaps it’s not chance that he selects Ian, a former priest, as his therapist. Hawkes’ John endlessly repeats himself with so many verbal tics and gestures that he makes one understand why listening to confession might be boring. (Get on with it, man, get on with it!) But no, and Heffernan’s uber-patient Ian listens with empathy. (Does therapy work, by the way, because we eventually get tired of saying the same things over and over and decide to just move on with our lives?)

Quick set changes mark time passing as the office space moves from basic starter place to fancy established practice. When Neasa (a forceful Ursula Cataan) visits Ian, we learn that he’s also a disturbed man with obligations he either resents or hasn’t come to terms with. As it turns out, Laurence, a needy rent boy (played by a charming Nicholas Chokan), seems to be the best-adjusted character in this twisted story of reluctantly acknowledged sorrow and guilt.

McPherson, perhaps desperate to relieve the tedium of extended monologues that fill the play, does change the play’s focus at the end, but it’s not enough. Audiences that are asked to sit for 90-plus minutes need more intensity to keep them involved, to make them care at all.

Bottom Line: Often well-acted, but talky play that may satisfy a need for vicarious thrills found eavesdropping at the local shrink’s office. It’s not for kids.

Shining City runs through Sun 5/1,  Fridays and Saturdays @ 8pm and Sundays @ 3pm. For tickets go to beckcenter.org or call 216.521.2540 x10.

[Written by Laura Kennelly]

Lakewood, OH 44107

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