DUBLIN CAROL Steppenwolf Theatre Company
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The focus of the play is John Plunkett, a middle-aged undertaker’s assistant in present-day Dublin. It’s Christmas Eve, and John has just presided over a funeral. Since his employer is sick in the hospital, John has had to take charge of the business—not an easy thing for a guy who has problems handling responsibility—so he’s hired his boss’s 20-year-old nephew, Mark (Stephen Louis Grush), to lend a hand graveside. Returning to a shabby office tricked out with a few tacky holiday decorations, John offers Mark tea while pouring whiskey for himself. “I’m old. I’ll die if I don’t drink this,” he says jokingly.
But as the two men unwind, John’s rambling conversation turns serious, and the devastating role liquor has played in his life becomes increasingly obvious. Reflecting on the importance of his work (“You’re trying to afford people a bit of respect in their last little bit with their family”) he recalls how Mark’s uncle, significantly named Noel, saved his life by giving him a job when he was on the skids.
Dublin Carol is hardly a cheerful way to kick off the winter holidays. But it’s a brave and appropriate offering for a season whose emphasis on festivities and family reunions can trigger depression, painful revelations, and alcohol abuse. As the title suggests, it owes something to Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. Both works are about a lonely man trapped in a psychological prison of his own making. Like Ebenezer Scrooge, John receives Christmas visitors who force him to review his life and his relationships to those around him. Mark, who is wrestling with his commitment to his girlfriend, reminds John of his own idealistic, callow younger self; Mary, torn between love and hate for her father, represents all he has lost. But Dublin Carol ends before John has to confront what Scrooge finally faces—the terror of death, in the form of the dying wife his daughter wants him to visit. Will John be able to make the final courageous gesture that might put his anguish to rest? McPherson leaves us uncertain but hopeful.v
