Tir na nOg (“Land of Youth”)

By Edna O’Brien
Directed by Chris Smith
Magic Theatre, San Francisco
March 1-March 23, 2008
http://www.magictheatre.org/

Photo: davidallenstudio.com

One hoped; one fervently hoped. The beauty and power of famed Irish novelist Edna O’Brien’s “Triptych,” mounted at Magic Theatre several seasons ago, gave rise to high expectations for the adaptation of her breakthrough novel “The Country Girls.” But the world premiere of “Tir na nOg” (in Gaelic) or “The Land of Youth,” once again proves that there’s many a slip twixt the page and the stage.

Conceived as a play with music, this is a coming of age story, following two girls from an obscure Irish hamlet -- through loss, sexual awakening and intellectual aspirations -- all the way to the big city and a life beyond narrow borders and narrow minds. This would be all well and good if O’Brien and outgoing Magic artistic director Chris Smith had confined themselves to a small canvas. But they paint their picture large, including numerous characters who wander in and out of the scene for little or no apparent reason. Given that the actors do double and even triple duty as characters, there is double and triple confusion as to who is who.

No sooner does the leading character, Kate (the luminous Allison Jean White) suffer the tragic loss of her mother, than the same actress (a lovely and simpatico Cat Thompson) shows up again as a teacher/novice in the convent school. Nobody should be surprised when Kate develops a schoolgirl crush on her After all; she’s the spitting image of her dead mother. But Kate’s real crush is on the elegant, elusive Mr. Gentleman (Robert Parsons), a married man who is not above a dalliance with a teenaged girl. But then Parsons resurfaces as a priest, not to mention an operatic Tristan in an ill-conceived and amateurish dream sequence. Even the mysterious Singing Woman (Deborah Black), a kind of one-woman gypsy Greek chorus, does double duty as a nun.

It’s all too much, too quick. Where a novel can take the time to spin out the lives of its various characters, the time constraints of the stage make keeping it simple an imperative. While the acting is quite good – excellent in the case of White, Summer Serafin as her adventurous sidekick, Baba, and the aforementioned Thompson – and the music and step dancing Celtic as you could wish, the whole thing kind of leaves your head in a spin. Shure and less might have been more in “The Land of Youth.” Nevertheless, it would be a bit of a lark for St. Patrick’s Day. It not only gives you a taste of what it’s like to be young; it hints at what it might be like to be Irish.

Suzanne Weiss