Theater Review: A bloody Cyprus Avenue features a stunning Stephen Rea

Cyprus Avenue

Written by David Ireland

Directed by Vicky Featherstone

Starring Stephen Rea

The Public Theater

June 24, 2018

There was recently an interesting article in the NY Times ranking the best 25 American plays  in the 25 years since Angels in America premiered in 1993. I have only seen a few of the plays (Ruined, The Humans, Jesus Hopped the “A” Train, The Laramie Project, and August, Osage County), but I have a few comments. First, it was interesting that Angels would be seen as some kind of iconic, Gibraltar-like anchor point of the ratings. Its flashy but only intermittently profound (see my recent review). Regarding the rated plays, Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train was not Stephen Guirges’ best play (From Riverside to Crazy was better). The Humans was at best a ‘meh’ play about NYC white people, certainly not in the league of August Osage County, which deserved a much higher rating than 19th.  Most of the chosen plays exhibit clear political/racial themes that are all the rage these days, perhaps explaining some of the choices. For example, the top two were Suzan-Lori Parks’ Topdog/Underdog and Branden Jacobs-Jensen’s An Octaroon, both which have themes centered on black-white race relations. I look forward to seeing both, but oddly neither has been revived in NYC in the three years I have been here, as one would hope for such top plays. In fact, the whole list is striking for the absence of revivals. Why are they not re-performed? The ratings article provoked a spirited reader commentary, one of which said that yes, these were fine plays, but all the best English-language plays of this era have been British, not American. I can support this statement a bit, as my reviews of Martin McDonagh’s Hangmen, Philip Ridley’s Mercury Fur, Enda Walsh’s Arlington (well, he is actually Irish), Caryl Churchill’s Escaped Alone, and above all Jez Butterworth’s The Ferryman will support. These have all topped the plays I have seen from the NY Times list, with the exceptions of Ruined and August, Osage County. Well, the good news for those who live near NY is that all the best British and Irish plays generally get at least a short run here, too.

This brings up the latest of these, a dark comic tragedy Cyprus Avenue (2016) by David Ireland, from Northern Ireland. The production at the Public Theater was stark: a brightly lit white square floor with a couple chairs, with the audience on two sides facing each other (similar to the effect of the intense Lorca play Yerma at the Armory). This focused our attention wholly on the tragedy, and particularly on the outstanding performance of the great Irish actor Stephen Rea (The Crying Game) as a bigoted Northern Irish Loyalist raging against accommodation with Catholic Irish. 

The play is an alternating set of scenes: first with him and his therapist, then with him and his family, all leading up to his unstated psychiatric “problem”. Rea portrays a complex character just on the edge of psychosis, but whose racist, sexist, sociopathic, and generally intolerant broadsides seem no different than what one hears on the news everyday from intolerant people, whether from the USA, Israel, or Iran. Think of a mix of a smarter Archie Bunker (All in the Family) with Travis Bickle (Taxi Driver). His character is sometimes brought back to reality by his new role as a grandfather, much as ignorant hatred can coexist alongside personal and family love. 

Yet playwright Ireland makes him oddly sympathetic, like one's racist uncle that you love none the less. His daughter, a millennial with multicultural beliefs, tries to make him see that “we are all Irish”, and that eventually the two parts of Ireland will merge. But he responds violently to this: “I will not condone the destruction of my own identity”. Later he says: “Without our prejudices, who are we?”. All of this was very resonant with the current worldwide intolerance of “others” that seems to leave many with mostly a tribal, not individual identity. While focusing on Northern Ireland, this is a play very much about the current worldwide resentments and anger that lead to recent elections in several countries. Rea, onstage throughout the one hour forty minutes, exhibited an enormous dramatic range, and was totally convincing in a very difficult role.

This play is a true tragedy on the bloody scope of Hamlet or Macbeth. I think the playwright seeks to shock us with all the ending mayhem, perhaps to make the point that this worldwide intolerance is not at all benign. I was less convinced by it, however, than other parts of the play, as the mayhem did not seem to organically emerge from the first part of the play, despite the unhinged nature of the protagonist. The great Shakespearean tragedies have a constant momentum that relentlessly leads us to the bloody climax. This is not quite achieved by Mr. Ireland in Cyprus Avenue.  So the violence seems more gratuitous, like a machine-like dragon arising from the waves at the climax of a Baroque opera. While this keeps the play from joining my “best” list, I will not forget the visceral impact of Mr. Rea’s performance anytime soon.