The Keegan Theatre is offering Kevin Barry’s “There Are Little Kingdoms,” a dramatic version of Barry’s stories about a small town in County Cork, Ireland, where all the inhabitants know one another and where no secrets are kept for long.
The narrator, Foley (Kryztov Lindquist), begins his description of a morning in the height of summer. He offers lyrical details, many of them linked to nature, to the plants he sees, to the physical reality around him. Foley is gifted with foresight, but his gift is spurned by the people in the town. As he sets the stage for the coming drama, seven actors appear and thereafter those seven represent 27 different characters.
After Foley, the first people Barry writes about are the cousins Brendan (Eric Lucas) and Jamesie (Drew Kopas), who establish the lazy atmosphere of the town, where men become gossipy old biddies in the pub where Mr. Kelliher (Alan Jirikowic) tends bar.
Lucas is strong in all four of his roles, particularly in the part of Brendan and of a man with amnesia who suddenly finds himself with a new business and a new identity. Much of the poetry and philosophy of the play belongs to Lucas in these two roles. Kopas lends energy to the production as the young man who likes to play billiards and flirt with girls.
One of most fully described characters in “There Are Little Kingdoms” is John Martin (Bill McKenney), a besieged chicken farmer whose Meadowsweet Farm is anything but idyllic: The farm is made up of flat land and barbed wire, the septic tank is backed up. When we meet him, Martin is having trouble with his disenchanted wife, with an impending inspection, with the married woman he lusts after and with her furious husband. The portrait is humorous despite Martin’s desperation.
Megan Thrift and Suzanne Watts act well together as the peppy team of Dee and Donna, the girls who are always on hand to taunt and tantalize various men. Thrift also effectively plays Noreen, the woman John Martin covets. Kerry Waters Lucas plays four roles, the most intriguing being a woman who drifts into town on the run from her husband. As she discusses the problems of marriage, Lucas transfixes the men she meets at a bar. Would that there had been more of her character in the play.
If you go
‘There Are Little Kingdoms’
Where: Keegan Theatre, Church Street Theatre, 1742 Church St. NW
When: 8 p.m. Sunday to Wednesday, 3 p.m. Saturday; through July 7
Info: $20 to $25; 703-892-0202; keegantheatre.com
Co-directors Kerry Waters Lucas and Eric Lucas emphasize the lush description, the air of reverie, the barrenness and the beauty in “There Are Little Kingdoms.” They capture nicely the impression of this County Cork town. But Barry’s language is periodically lost in some characters’ uneasy grasp of the Irish accent, and the definitions between the characters are not always clear-cut. The theatrical version of Barry’s stories has been produced elsewhere, though the playbill doesn’t say who adapted the stories for the stage. Stories, by definition, are discrete; their characters and plots have specific shapes. In the stage production of “There are Little Kingdoms,” the stories all run together, blending their characters and plots, and there is not a significant dramatic structure to support them. Despite its poetry and bursts of original observation about humankind, “There Are Little Kingdoms” ultimately suffers for not having a sturdy enough dramatic scaffolding.
