The actor John Keating is often a tall bag of bones with fright-wig hair and frightened-deer eyes, a glance created for character components. That he am dao gia nhu that nabs the direct part in Laoisa Sexton’s “The Pigeon within the Taj Mahal” on the Irish Repertory Theater is cause ample to check out it, although the Engage in’s protracted execution wears out the prickly attraction of its premise.
Mr. Keating plays the Pigeon of the title, a sweater-clad, Elvis-quoting naïf who lives inside of a trailer park in rural Ireland. Is he lonesome tonight? Not precisely. But he’s clearly thrilled to find a youthful girl in smeared make-up and ripped tulle dumped on his doorstep. “You may have the unheard of elegance,” he says to her unconscious type. “Like a swan in a soiled lake!” This can be Lolly (Ms. Sexton), a plastered bride-to-be overdosed on vodka and system glitter. On waking, she 1st threatens Pigeon having a hammer and then softens at his odd hospitality.
After Lolly is kind of awake, Ms. Sexton has excellent entertaining contrasting her shallow city models with Pigeon’s callow methods. “D’you got apple iphone, d’you do?” she whines. “I phone?” the perplexed Pigeon asks. But as they continue to be inside the trailer, the Perform starts to spin its motionless wheels. There’s lots of dialogue and many depredation, Specially at the time A different bachelorette (Zoë Watkins) comes, but obtaining place these characters with each other, Ms. Sexton and also the director, Alan Cox, don’t know rather how to proceed with them. Inspite of a persistent concept of innocence and encounter, and several questions on the place of folklore in up to date Ireland, “The Pigeon from the Taj Mahal” generally appears like a just one-act that outgrew itself. A little less dialogue wouldn’t harm.
But action worries Ms. Sexton far a lot less than providing a vigorous, occasionally vulgar showcase for herself and one other actors. A deft performer, she clearly enjoys Lolly’s woozy, crude obliviousness, but she's equally as pleased to cede the phase to Mr. Keating. Pigeon isn’t a completely credible character, but Mr. Keating lends him warmth and a gentle kind of bravery, even while donning lipstick as well as a penis headband. Cheers to Ms. Sexton for letting this distinct actor unfold his wings.