After Luke & When I Was God

After Luke & When I Was God

• Photographs: Carol Rosegg
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Photographs: Carol Rosegg

If there’s an antidefamation league for Irish fathers, it should be exercised over Conál Creedon’s twofer at Irish Repertory Theatre. After Luke & When I Was God portray male heads of Emerald Isle households as, first, feckless gamblers who drive wives to suicide and sons to bitter rivalry and, second, sports-obsessed bullies who live vicariously through alienated sons. You have to wonder if Creedon and his own accursed progenitor have spoken in years. Come to think of it, Irish dramatists generally share this issue: Classics such as The Playboy of the Western World and The Field do not cast dads in a flattering light.

On balance, the fathers in these American premieres are not complete monsters. After Luke, based on the parable of the Prodigal Son, centers on a fractious, widowed clan. Dadda (Lane) has tried to raise his boys Son (Gregg) and Maneen (Mellamphy) by bellowing curses and setting them against each other. Once ambitious Maneen comes of age, he jets off to London, while the dim-witted Son repairs cars and tends to chickens. Years later, metaphorical cluckers come home to roost when Maneen tries to convince Dadda to sell their now-valuable Cork property. Creedon mingles folksy, profane humor and heartache, making for a pungent short story of a play.

The second piece, When I Was God, outstays its welcome. Framed as the memories of a retiring soccer referee (Mellamphy), it recalls his monomaniacal father (Gregg), who pushed his son into the fast and dangerous game of hurling. While Gregg commits fully to the role of a grunting, screaming nationalist pig, the sketch grows wearying at nearly an hour. Still, in Creedon’s seriocomic yarn-spinning, there’s robust humor and plenty of rough poetic flourish. Father might know worst, but he can turn a juicy phrase.—David Cote

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