Michael Mellamphy is Tim Finnegan, a bartender with secrets, in Ronán Noone’s solo play The Smuggler.
Ronán Noone’s The Smuggler heightens the inherent challenges of the one-person play with rhyming verse. The one-act “thriller in rhyme,” as it is subtitled, is a 9,000-word poem, but solo performer Michael Mellamphy, under the direction of Conor Bagley, clears the hurdles of the challenging form and effectively engages and entertains the audience—all while crafting cocktails and, of course, rhyming.
Mellamphy banters with the audience and takes drink orders for the tables in front in his role as Tim at the Irish Rep. Photographs by Carol Rosegg.
Set in 2023 on Amity, a moneyed island off the Massachusetts coast, Noone’s award-winning dark comedy has been comfortably set in the downstairs studio space at the Irish Repertory Theatre by designer Ann Beyersdorfer and props designer Jason Brubaker. They have artfully transformed the small theater into a watering hole, featuring Nantucket-blue walls adorned with nautical decor and Irish paraphernalia. Low-top tables with dim lamps glow between seats in the audience, creating the allure of a speakeasy. Here, aspiring writer-turned-bartender Tim Finnegan (Mellamphy) holds court and welcomes patrons while crooning along to Frank Sinatra’s “Come Fly With Me.” The Irish immigrant mixes drinks for audience members seated at cocktail tables downstage. He’s about to spin a yarn, and he’s readying to win over the crowd.
“Tim soon discovers some of his new coworkers are criminals, including human smugglers. ”
Before diving into his story, Tim shares a crucial bit of context: “I am / An Amerikan / I may not sound like it / But I am / Got the greencard / Worked hard to be / A citizan.”
When Tim loses his bartending job, he needs to find a way to support his ailing toddler and his wife, who has her eyes on a three-bedroom Cape they can’t afford. He sets aside his aspirations of becoming a writer—he notes that he’s been published in The Paris Review and The Irish Times—and takes a job painting houses for fast cash. Tim soon discovers some of his new coworkers are criminals, including human smugglers. He devises a plan to rob the homes of local undocumented immigrants, looting under-the-table earnings hidden beneath mattresses and behind power sockets. He makes that down payment—one step toward the American dream.
Clad in a gingham Vineyard Vines button-up and chino shorts, Tim seems incapable of this moral depravity. And maybe he is—perhaps this affable, wannabe writer is pulling legs with a fictitious story. It feels like a far stretch, and Tim struggles to make a strong case for himself. He conflates the plight of the undocumented with that of the poor, and he tries to rationalize his actions through rhyme:
You might think
It’s not that easy
But it’s a thin line
Between desperation
And acting immorally.
Tim divulges a shady past in The Smuggler.
Tim’s story about how he went from writing to tending bar to stealing includes wandering scenes about a fatal car crash on Amity involving an undocumented immigrant. He also weaves a loose metaphor linking the uprooting of a sycamore tree on his parents-in-law’s lawn to the immigrant experience. One of the strongest (and goofiest) scenes involves Tim wrestling a giant rat in a basement while in the middle of a theft, and gorily squeezing its eyes out: “And he smiles as if he’s winking at me / Which he couldn’t do / Because his eyes are on the ground / Like squished meatballs in a stew.” The pitch-black lighting (by Michael O’Connor) and suspenseful synthwaves (by Liam Bellman-Sharpe) during this rogue fight put some thrill in the thriller.
Through it all, Mellamphy deftly portrays 10 characters, from a Colombian contractor to a “bro”-like policeman. (Some portrayals are better than others.) He punctuates the rhymes and near-rhymes with his Dublin accent and nonstop action. He shakes cocktails and constantly moves from behind the bar, atop stools, and into the audience. The performance is a physical as well as verbal feat. Bagley’s direction of Mellamphy is skillful and well-paced, energizing the 70-minute play.
The Smuggler, however, leaves the moral quandary of thievery and smuggling a tangled mess. Tim isn’t remorseful for his nefarious actions, and he never asks for forgiveness. Moreover, he implicates the audience for relying on the transportation of undocumented people:
I’m not tryin’ to be fatuous
But there is some truth to this
So you can have dishes washed
In a restaurant
Your house painted
Nannies for your broods
Apartment cleaned
Fruit picked to buy
At Whole Foods.
Tim spills his secret in hopes the audience can receive it and keep it without judgment, like a loyal customer to a good bartender.
The Smuggler runs through March 12 at the Irish Repertory Theatre’s W. Scott McLucas Studio Theatre (132 W. 22nd St.) Evening performances are at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday, and at 8 p.m. on Friday; matinees are at 2 p.m. on Wednesday and Saturday, and 3 p.m. on Sunday. For tickets, visit irishrep.org or call (212) 727-2737.
