By MICHAEL KUCHWARA, AP Drama Critic
2 hours, 10 minutes ago
At off-Broadway's Atlantic Theater Company, where the play opened Wednesday, McPherson, author of "The Seafarer" and "Shining City," creates a trio of indelible portraits — three Irishmen of different generations, yet each one linked by moments of indecision that will affect the rest of their lives.
Monologues can be stolid and inert. Not so at the Atlantic where an accomplished cast — Jim Norton, Brian d'Arcy James and John Gallagher Jr. — invests these flawed yet remarkably likable people with a striking theatricality.
One of the keys to McPherson's success is his specificity, here the rich details of Irish life, primarily Dublin, which swirls around these men. Director Henry Wishcamper wisely lets the playwright's descriptions work their magic with a minimum of fussiness. All three characters, lost in thought, sit on a sturdy wooden bench (the simple yet effective setting is by Takeshi Kata) and then step forward to tell their stories.
Norton, Tony-nominated this season for his performance in "The Seafarer," portrays the oldest, a witty, garrulous resident of a retirement home. It's here where the man receives an unexpected gift, a reminder of an incident that long ago interrupted his placid domestic life — and has haunted him ever since.
Norton excels at a kind of genial folksiness. He's the kind of performer who immediately draws in an audience with his personable, avuncular style.
James plays a feisty, hard-drinking fellow who unexpectedly finds himself in a new, glamorous job in what has become the new, economically affluent Ireland. It's a story of comic bewilderment, punctuated with bits of unease over a marriage that hasn't turned out quite as he expected. The actor is a delight, successfully capturing the nervous bravado of a middle-aged man in over his head but still relishing every bit of his improbable success.
And then there is Gallagher, playing a young man moving out of his parents' home and into a house with some grungy band buddies and a girl named Claire, whom he worships from afar.
Gallagher, one of the original stars of "Spring Awakening" (which started at the Atlantic), delivers a sweetly affecting snapshot of moonstruck young love. He's also slyly funny in detailing the antics of the youth's rowdy, drunken house mates — and his increasingly desperate attempts to fit into this world of cheap alcohol and readily available sex.
But then the playwright's quirky sense of humor serves all the characters, building on the poetry of his language to create the right balance between laughter and tears.
"Port Authority" is remarkable in another sense, too. While it is emotional, it is never overly sentimental. Maybe that's because the considerable emotion that is displayed here is honestly earned — and made all the more satisfying because it is so artfully portrayed.
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