‘The Seafarer’ is a Dark and Amusing Tale of Redemption (Review)
metroweekly.comThe Seafarer is just as powerfully a contemplation on what it is to knock along in a life pot-holed with bad luck and dysfunction.
Indeed, almost all of the first act is a fly-on-the-wall immersion in a certain kind of seedy male domesticity.Amid peeling wallpaper and rising damp, the house buzzes with bark, banter, and potted philosophizing as mismatched cups, milk possibly past its sell-by date, and a lifetime’s unhealthy relationship with alcohol arrive and depart.
When trouble eventually comes to call, it’s nearly subsumed by the general miasma of intentions — good and bad — giving way to the proffering of yet more unsolicited commentary and another refill.The joy of McPherson is in this attention to psychological detail and his keen ear for the working-class language of his native Ireland and all it can convey — be it yelled, muttered, or withheld.
Just as clever is the way he surfaces his characters’ stasis — chosen or imposed — with word or suggestion.As Christmas Eve arrives in the elderly Richard Harkin’s worse-for-the-wear abode near the coast (delivered via Andrew R.
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