John Charles McLaughlin and Gina Costigan in “Crackskull Row.”
PHOTO BY MICHAEL BONASIO
By Frances Scanlon
Oedipus, oh Oedipus where art Thou, oh Oedipus.
If you aren't available then is there a Dr. Oedipus in the House?
Not to worry we'll sort this out well enough on our own.
Lest anyone thinks “Crackskull Row” is about a place and/or that infinitely favored complex, fear not.
“Crackskull Row” blows open the underbelly of mother/son relations in a fashion that is so natural, so very matter of fact that one might think everyone is doing it.
If they are, at what price and to what end? Dr. Freud, her Honor has availability on Monday at noon to see you; her couch awaits you. Meanwhile for everyone else pack up all your cares and woes and race to the cell’s production of “Crackskull Row” at the Workshop Theatre’s Main Stage: that's where your freedom lies.
With flashbacks aplenty between late 1960s Dublin and late 1990s Dublin one can well understand why the old noggin might take a bit of a psychic see-saw in this essentially three-character driven play, even though there are four fine actors on stage.
Don't let the names fool you: this is no Dancer, and Prancer, and... Instead this is the world populated by Rasher, Basher, Masher, Young Rash, ESB Boy, Dolly and Wee Dolly.
Masher, who back in the day was a go-go dancer is all out of step and now 30 years later covets her couch which she describes as her “castle” within her "little kingdom."
Indeed she ponders the visit from the ESB Boy who declares: "I am here to fix the future for there is no future in fixing the past.”
Trancing around with the shadows of the dead but never fully departed whilst clinging to spent dreams, wasted schemes and knuckle-head longings, the three are Everyman, neither loser, nor winner, nowhere, here nor there.
That's the short and long of it: they are prisoners of Dublin 2 whilst a world so nearby yet so far, far away is careening into a free-fall of political upheaval and unrest that won't see a real “Good Friday” until almost 30 years later.
The three are bit players in their own half-lived lives. Even ghosts can't shadow the paltry stew that is the quagmire of each.
Curiously at the beginning and very end of “Crackskull Row” reference is made to Maspeth, Queens, a place that was chartered by New Netherlanders and English settlers in the 17th century.
Maspeth is associated with the Mespeatches Indians, one of the 13 main Indian tribes that lived on Long Island.
When translated the word "Maspeth" signifies an area "at the bad waterplace," relative to the many stagnant swamps that then existed in that region.
Clearly “Crackskull Row” is a moshpit of venom, vile and voracious misgivings that have ossified into a desert of a netherland that can neither exist nor be killed.
Stunning and brilliant in its unrelenting intensity, “Crackskull Row” won't let the past off lightly, it won't let the dead go quietly into the night – they don't want to – and perhaps most importantly it won't let you ever forget how quantum the political is personal.
“Crackskull Row,” written by Honor Molloy, directed by Kira Simring and featuring Terry Donnelly, Colin Lane, Gina Costigan, and John Charles McLaughlin is playing at the Workshop Theater, 312 West 36th St. through Sept. 25. Reservations 800-838-3006. For more information on the 1st Irish Festival go to www.1stirish.org.
