Ed Malone
Fergal Titley
NY Theater Review by Susan Hasho
The Theatre Space at Ryan’s Daughter is a great venue for this Irish 1-hour monologue written by Ed Malone and starring Fergal Titley. An Irish pub is certainly the place to see an Irish playwright and an Irish actor take on many varieties of Irish dysfunction with what turns out to be bitter humor and increasingly empty sight gags.
This is a play about Mr. Malone’s mother, her sister and her sister in law; and Mr. Titley has 34 characters to inhabit that tell this tale. The women (all portrayed, of course, by him) lead lives of futile, male alcoholic domination. The husbands die, the women get free in tandem and in travel and meet men to get it on with in various countries along the way. At breakneck speed Titley gamely moves from the marriages, the deaths, to travel agent, Spain, to Michael Jackson, to American cabby, to Indian guru and winds up the tale with ‘go back to where you came from.’
If there had been some heart to this play, it would have been funnier and it would have been worth the harshness of the narrative. But it only reads as an actor’s marathon, even though the actor is willing enough and sweet.
THE THEATRE SPACE at RYAN’S DAUGHTER
350 East 85th Street JUNE 19 through JULY 24
Thursdays at 8:00pm
Sundays at 3:00pm
Tickets $10.00 Phone 646-384-0009
