Also this issue:

Tilted View
One Philadelphian's quest to bring a controversial piece of public art to our city.
-Robin Rice

Odd Fellows
-Jen Darr

BodyVox
-Janet Anderson

Louis Menand
-Sam Adams

tick tick ... Boom!
-Steve Cohen

Carmina Burana/Le Travail
-Janet Anderson

The Male Intellect: An Oxymoron?
-David Anthony Fox and Toby Zinman

Three plays at Triangle Theater
-Toby Zinman

February 20-26, 2003

theater

By the Bog of Cats ...

by Toby Zinman

Medea, that fabulous suffering monster of ancient Greek tragedy, child-killer and brilliant witch, is really taking a beating this season. Reduced by Fiona Shaw and Deborah Warner to a lunatic suburban housewife in the much-touted production currently on Broadway, she is now lurking just beneath the surface of Marina Carr's engrossing Irish melodrama, By the Bog of Cats , directed with much style by Harriet Power. The production is strong, the script is not.

The grim, mysterious set (designed by Daniel Boylen) -- a long, shadow-dappled stone floor -- evokes a timeless place. This is the world of Irish Travelers, the itinerant tinkers who speak their own strange language; it is contemporary, but feels ancient, and the Bog has a mystical hold on its peculiar inhabitants: the passionate Hester (Rose Malague), whom we meet when she is burying a black swan who died in the night; an otherworldly Ghost Fancier (Mike Dees), who stalks the Bog; and the blind Catwoman (Joanna Rotté, cutesifying the spooky), who eats mice and drinks her wine out of a saucer. When ordinary people meet and mate with Bog people, there is bound to be calamity.

So, when Carthage Kilbride (Patrick Edward White) marries one of his own kind (young, rich Caroline, played by Brett Maguire), rejecting his lover, Hester, after 14 years, and as they struggle over custody of their 7-year-old daughter (Maddie Sutton-Smith), we wait for the inevitable bloody retribution. The second act, a wedding banquet, readjusts us to normality: There are pompous fathers-in-law, nasty grannies (a fine turn by Hazel Bowers), a senile priest and a sprinkling of neighbors. But Act 3 is waiting, full of ghastly ghosts, arson, mayhem and bloody murder.

The trouble is in excess: Carr has written half a dozen subplots, with long, confusing revelations (What did old man Cassidy do to his son when he poisoned his dog? Where was Hester living after her mother abandoned her?). It's a long gothic novel crammed into two hours and the result is melodrama rather than tragedy.

Carr, whose play The Mai was seen locally several years ago, is in residence at Villanova for the spring semester; she has won prize after prize in Ireland, and the rich poetic colloquialism of the language of her dialogue is challenging -- a challenge the cast meets handsomely.

Through Feb. 23, Villanova Theatre, 108 Vasey Hall, Villanova University, 610-519-7474