Journey Home ‘Tis The Season To Be Irish, But Interplayers Comedy Promises Universal Sentiments

The fact that “Da” opens on St. Patrick’s weekend at the Interplayers Ensemble is probably not a coincidence. Nor was it a coincidence that it opened on St. Patrick’s week in New York in 1978.

“Da” is an indisputably Irish play. It is set in Ireland; all of the characters are Irish; and playwright Hugh Leonard has been one of Ireland’s most prolific playwrights since the 1950s. In fact, the word “da” is Irish vernacular for “dad.”

However, don’t expect any leprechauns or shillelaghs in this play. This is a contemporary play about contemporary people; specifically, it’s about a man who returns to his father’s Dublin home to sort out his affairs after his death.

“I would hope that the people in ‘Da’ are no different from their equivalents in New York,” Leonard told the New York Times in 1978. “An Irish play is bad when it is not applicable except in Ireland.”

“Da” certainly proved more than applicable in America; it proved uncommonly successful. It won a Tony award and most of the New York critics’ awards that year. It previously had successful runs in Dublin (1973) and London (1977).

“Like its central character, ‘Da’ is loquacious, exasperating, persistent and finally not far from irresistible,” said Richard Eder in the New York Times. ” … At first glance it is a sentimental comedy, but the sentiment is fortified with brains and bones, and the comedy is a clear-running delight.”

Walter Kerr of the New York Times, the dean of New York reviewers at the time, said this: “Everything’s effortless, impish, arrogant and touching, gliding through uncharted paths as smoothly as warm butter, from the time the first ghost pokes his head through the shabby kitchen curtains.”

Ghost? Did he say ghost?

Yes, most of the characters in “Da” are ghosts who visit the son in that Dublin kitchen. They are not anything like leprechauns; they are more like memories. The most memorable is the one who first walks through the door.

“It is Charles’s father, Da; or rather, it is Charles’s inability - made stage flesh - either to forget him or come to terms with him,” said Eder. “And the rest of the play is a series of scenes in which Charles engages in a comic but futile battle of the wits.”

While these ghosts may seem a contrived way of dealing with memories, it “comes to seem less contrived as each delicately told and unerringly observed scene takes place,” said Eder.

Leonard (real name, John Keyes Byrne) doesn’t try to hide the fact that “Da” is almost totally autobiographical. Leonard said he was swapping stories about his father one day with a group of actors, and one of them said, “Is there a play in that?”

There was. A few months later, he started work on a play about his father, and the writing came easily.

“If in 83 years of a man’s life, I can’t find two and a half hours of drama, then I’m not a playwright,” Leonard told the New York Times.

The father in the play, and in real life, was laid off after 50 years on a job and was given nothing in return but a tiny pension and a trinket (30 pairs of spectacles welded together during the San Francisco Fire).

The callous employer who actually did this to Leonard’s father came to see the play in Dublin … and liked it.

“Some people just can’t be insulted,” Leonard told the New York Times.

“Da” was made into a 1988 movie starring Martin Sheen and Bernard Hughes.

The Interplayers production is directed by artistic director Joan Welch. The son is played by William Westenberg, and the father by Yaakov Sullivan. Other cast members are David Heath, Heather Jackson, Tim McMurray, Jay Jenkins, Darlene Stafford and Paula Nelson.

It opens on Friday and continues Tuesdays through Saturdays through April 6. Curtain time is 8 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays; 7:30 p.m. on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Matinee performances are at 2 p.m. March 16, 20 and 23.

For reservations, call 455-PLAY. Interplayers is Spokane’s resident professional theater at 174 S. Howard.

‘The Owl and the Pussycat’

The Post Falls Arts Commission presents two dinner theater performances and two “dessert theater” performances of this 1964 comedy classic by Bill Manhoff.

Most people remember the story from the George Segal-Barbra Streisand movie. In this production, Bob Brannan plays Felix, the stuffy author, and Jean De Barbieris plays Doris, the spunky prostitute.

The River City Chamber Singers will provide additional entertainment before the show.

All four performances will be at Templin’s Resort Hotel in Post Falls. The dinner theater performances will be at 6 p.m. on both Saturday and on March 22. Tickets are $25.

The dessert theater performances are on Sunday and again on March 24, also at 6 p.m. Tickets are $15.

Reservations are required by calling (208) 777-9ART.

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