Review: `Tir na nOg’

Opened March 1, 2008, Magic TheatreEdna O'Brien's novel-turned-play lacks dramatic firetwo stars Page-to-stage misfireIn many ways, Edna O'Brien's Tir na nOg (Land of Youth) feels like a Word for Word production gone wrong.Word for Word is the tremendously successful group that turns works of fiction into works of theater without changing the original text. If O'Brien had gone the Word for Word route in turning her first novel, The Country Girls (1960), into a play, she probably would have had better luck.As it is, Tir na nOg, which had its world premiere at San Francisco's Magic Theatre, feels like fiction that hasn't found its way into the world of theater.There's some beautiful, funny writing, and the story itself, ultimately about a young woman's liberation from the bonds of society, church and family, is interesting. But as a playwright, O'Brien, who is no stranger to the Magic stage (Triptych, Family Butchers)), working the Magic's outgoing artistic director, Chris Smith, hasn't found a way for the story to live and breathe as a play.The first act, set in the mid-to-late 1950s, is simply dramatically inert. We meet O'Brien's heroines: Baba Brennan (Summer Serafin), from one of the small towns better families, and Kate Brady (Allison Jean White), a smart but poor girl whose father gets abusive when he drinks, which is often.Once O'Brien effectively gets rid of Kate's parents and sends the girls to convent boarding school, nothing happens. The most exciting thing on stage is seeing what the giant armoire at the back of Annie Smart's mostly bare set will open to reveal: candles in a church, a family's china collection or a priest's pulpit.Director Smith attempts to weave music throughout the proceedings, with Deborah Black as a nameless woman (outfitted by costumer Cassandra Carpenter as a beggar woman), who wanders through singing. We occasionally get a fiddle or a guitar along with a group number, but the music isn't nearly as effective or as evocative as it wants to be.It would seem that O'Brien and Smith are attempting to create a play with music, much like director Richard Nelson did in his beautiful adaptation of James Joyce's The Dead. But the music here adds very little, especially at the end of Act 1, when a song about Dublin, the big bad city, is meant to be dramatic, when it's really just confusing.In Act 2, once Baba and Kate are in Dublin, things get a little more interesting, but Kate's romance with an older married man, Mr. Gentleman (Robert Parsons) is bungled. And the ending, when the beggar woman becomes a guiding spirit and helps Kate come to terms with her past and move more confidently into her future is more believable -- and more moving -- in theory than in practice. The end feels like a literary device that would be far more effective on the page.Though the play, which runs about two long hours, can't overcome its episodic nature to achieve dramatic momentum, the performances are strong, especially those of the thoughtful, sensitive White as Kate and the vibrant, red-headed verve of Serafin as the spitfire Baba.Like all of the supporting players, Anne Darragh essays many parts and is most effective as a German landlady who doesn't appreciate the "cheeky" girls living in her house and flirting with her husband.Matt Foyer makes much of a thankless part in Kate's drunken father, and both Cat Thompson (as a sweet nun who takes a liking to Kate) and Michael Louis Wells (in all his parts but especially as Hickey, a small town working man) shine.The conclusion of Tir na nOg feels like the end of a first chapter, not the end of a play. Indeed, the original novel turned out to be the first part of a trilogy. It might have been much more interesting to dramatize one of the other books and refer to the first one in flashback, because that's what this play feels like.Tir na nOg continues through March 23 at the Magic Theatre, Building D, Fort Mason Center, Marina Boulevard at Buchanan Street, San Francisco. Tickets are $20-$45. Call 415-441-8822 or visit www.magictheatre.org.