Anthony and Rosemary are two introverted misfits. Anthony has spent his entire life on a cattle farm in rural Ireland, oblivious to the longing of his neighbor Rosemary, who hopelessly pines for him as the years slip away. With Anthony’s father threatening to disinherit him and a land feud simmering between the families, Rosemary fears romantic catastrophe. These two eccentric souls scramble their way towards happiness in a compassionate, delightful tale of how surprising love can be.
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Production photos by Michael Brosilow.
REVIEW
Outside Mullingar: Spark of intensity lights an Irish fire
★★★½
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
March 22, 2015
By CHRIS JONES
Outside Mullingar, a recent play by John Patrick Shanley (Doubt) and the newest attraction from the Northlight Theatre in Skokie, starts out in a manner familiar to anyone with affection for dramas set in rural Ireland, suggesting a comfortable and comforting St. Patrick’s Day attraction with very few surprises.
We’re in a rustic kitchen – designed by Kevin Depinet – drinking tea. There is talk of death and familial dissent, of long-simmering resentments, of fathers disappointed in sons, of battles over the verdant land of County Westmeath and who deserves its riches. There is rural melancholy, cut with mordent wit. The veteran actors on the Northlight stage, Annabel Armour and William J. Norris, could play their droll, droll characters in their sleep. Mark Montgomery, who plays Anthony Reilly, a 42-year-old man who has never quite gotten out of his village or away from his da, is also very much in his wheelhouse. And BJ Jones’ gently unfolding production feels a lot like a beloved sweater that can be pulled on to assuage the March winds.
Enter Kate Fry, burning.
Once Fry shows up as Rosemary Muldoon – a woman who seems to be consumed by resentments but is, in fact, broiling with love for Anthony, it is a like a hurricane has hit Outside Mullingar. By sheer force of authentic will, and through her innate grasp of how life-and-death stakes are crucial to even the most bucolic and predictable of romantic dramas, Fry grabs this show by the scruff of its scraggly neck and drags it outside for a battle royal.
Her intensity is so palpable, her longings so intense, she raises the game of everyone in the cast – so that, by the end, it seems like Montgomery, who looks like he does not know what has hit him, has stared into the depths of Anthony’s lonely soul and, by necessity, his own.
Fry, who is very selective in what she does and does not do, has quite the body of distinguished work in Chicago theater, but this performance is right up there with her best.
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REVIEW
Laughter and longing in John Patrick Shanley’s masterful Outside Mullingar
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
March 22, 2015
By HEDY WEISS
The very first word uttered in Outside Mullingar, John Patrick Shanley’s great beauty of a play about love and longing, parents and children, and the prickly nature of real estate, is the exclamation, “Jesus,” as it can sound only when spoken with a full-out Irish accent and years of frustration behind it.
You can take the exclamation as an indication that this masterful tale of thwarted possession – whether of hearts, of land or of self – will finally have some resolution. But it is the getting there that drives this 90-minute wonder of a play, a play far more comic than tragic as it spins around what might just be one of the loopiest and most contentious courtships since that of Beatrice and Benedick in Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing.
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REVIEW
Mullingar finds poetry in dirt, rain and family strife
PIONEER PRESS
March 23, 2015
By CATEY SULLIVAN
John Patrick Shanley’s Outside Mullingar is rarely less than engrossing. Both a romance and a meditation on death, legacy, and the deep pain that results when dreams are stymied for decades, Outside Mullingar is lyrically rich and marvelously acted.
Director BJ Jones has assembled a top-tier quartet for Shanley’s gently moving and deeply emotional drama … What makes the piece work so well are the performances Jones gets from his marvelous cast. Montgomery wears the primal pain of a wounded animal on his face, even in the more lighthearted moments. Fry’s Rosemary is similarly broken, but never without a core of fiery optimism that allows her to take charge of her life at its lowest point.
Armour brings a gentle but steely grace to the aging Aoife, while Norris is a textbook curmudgeon.
Outside Mullingar is compelling from start to finish. It’s sweet, sad and bracingly unsentimental. Shanley finds poetry and profundity in dirt and rain and fractured families and that poetry is simply gorgeous.
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REVIEW
Outside Mullingar a wondrously glowing performance
EVANSTON NOW
March 21, 2015
By ERIC SHOEMAKER
Best known as the writer of Moonstruck and Doubt, John Patrick Shanley strums a heartfelt chord with Outside Mullingar. With this production, Northlight Theatre provides the acting chops and the intimacy for a truly wonder-filled performance.
John Patrick Shanley has run the gamut of thought-provoking and touching performance writing, leading to Tony, Oscar, and Pulitzer awards. He has, until recently, avoided writing about his Irish heritage, but something drew him back – just as the characters in Outside Mullingar are drawn back to the land and to one another.
A series of sharply insightful but altogether human scenes between two Irish families brings the younger generation to an appreciation of one another and of life, despite farm life’s caging qualities. In the best way, the script of Mullingar reminds us that it is okay to be small-town, to avoid the crowd, to be yourself, and to appreciate the little things. This funny and genuine script by Shanley is a piece to see now, especially because Shanley is working on the screenplay adaptation.
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REVIEW
John Patrick Shanley’s Outside Mullingar richly realized at Skokie’s Northlight Theatre
★★★½
DAILY HERALD
March 25, 2015
By SCOTT C. MORGAN
John Patrick Shanley’s 2014 Broadway comedy Outside Mullingar makes a strong Midwest debut at Northlight Theatre in Skokie. Yet you can bet that some theatergoers will dismiss it as “slight.”
That’s because Outside Mullingar doesn’t carry the same dramatic weight as Shanley’s 2005 drama Doubt, which won multiple theater awards and still holds sway as a modern American classic.
It’s more fair to compare the Tony-nominated Outside Mullingar with Shanley’s Academy Award-winning 1987 screenplay for Moonstruck. Taken on these terms, Outside Mullingar emerges as a richly rewarding comedy to explore long-standing neighborly grudges and long-delayed love among quirky and superstitious Irish farmers.
Shanley’s comedy abounds in snappy dialogue and pained comic situations. But Outside Mullingar also achieves an emotional depth, wistfully looking at unrequited love and parental disappointments.
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PREVIEW
19 theater shows to see this spring
TIME OUT CHICAGO
February 24, 2015
By KRIS VIRE
Outside Mullingar: Kate Fry and Mark L. Montgomery star as oddball middle-aged neighbors in rural Ireland, stumbling their way toward a late chance at love in John Patrick Shanley’s gentle 2014 dramedy. Northlight artistic director BJ Jones stages the Chicago premiere.
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PREVIEW
WINTER THEATER SPECIAL Winter premieres: Something new
WINDY CITY TIMES
January 21, 2015
By JONATHAN ABARBANEL
Outside Mullingar, Northlight Theatre at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, March 13-April 19—Veteran U.S. playwright John Patrick Shanley scored a Tony Award nomination for this play in 2014, and he’s quite the storyteller. This one, set in rural Ireland, offers a long-delayed and maybe-misguided romance between two neighbors whose families just may be planning a feud. Northlight artistic director BJ Jones will direct, and he knows his stuff.
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PREVIEW
Chicago’s winter/spring theater season an eclectic mix
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
January 7, 2015
By MARY HOULIHAN
“Outside Mullingar” (March 13-April 19): Northlight Theatre artistic director BJ Jones stages John Patrick Shanley’s comedy-drama about two introverted Irish misfits who lean toward love and happiness despite the possible land feud simmering between their families.