The actor John Keating can be a tall bag of bones with fright-wig hair and frightened-deer eyes, a glance constructed for character elements. That he nabs the guide position in Laoisa Sexton’s “The Pigeon in the Taj Mahal” at the Irish Repertory Theater is motive ample to determine it, regardless of whether the Participate in’s protracted execution wears out the prickly charm of its premise.
Mr. Keating plays the Pigeon of your title, a sweater-clad, Elvis-quoting naïfile who lives inside a trailer park in rural Ireland. Is he lonesome tonight? Not precisely. But he’s Obviously thrilled to find a younger am dao gia female in smeared makeup and ripped tulle dumped on his doorstep. “You may have the uncommon magnificence,” he claims to her unconscious form. “Just like a swan inside a filthy lake!” That is Lolly (Ms. Sexton), a plastered bride-to-be overdosed on vodka and physique glitter. On waking, she initial threatens Pigeon having a hammer and then softens at his odd hospitality.
After Lolly is more or less awake, Ms. Sexton has good exciting contrasting her shallow city kinds with Pigeon’s callow ways. “D’you bought apple iphone, d’you are doing?” she whines. “I telephone?” the perplexed Pigeon asks. But as they remain while in the trailer, the play starts to spin its motionless wheels. There’s plenty of dialogue and plenty of depredation, Particularly the moment Yet another bachelorette (Zoë Watkins) comes, but owning put these figures with each other, Ms. Sexton along with the director, Alan Cox, don’t know rather what to do with them. Despite a persistent concept of innocence and experience, and many questions on the location of folklore in up to date Ireland, “The Pigeon during the Taj Mahal” typically feels like a just one-act that outgrew alone. A little less dialogue wouldn’t harm.
But action considerations Ms. Sexton much lower than providing a vigorous, often vulgar showcase for herself and another actors. A deft performer, she clearly enjoys Lolly’s woozy, crude obliviousness, but she is equally as satisfied to cede the phase to Mr. Keating. Pigeon isn’t an entirely credible character, but Mr. Keating lends him heat and a gentle form of bravery, even though putting on lipstick in addition to a penis headband. Cheers to Ms. Sexton for letting this exclusive actor unfold his wings.