George Bernard Shaw’s most “Irish” play, arrives here at a time when front-page news accounts and photos are showing us acts of hatred in Northern Ireland that Shaw could not possibly have imagined.
By contrast, Shaw’s civilized 1904 drama on the real and imagined gaps between the English and the Irish national characters is mild in its satire and gentle in its remonstrances. Its plea for Irish independence seems almost insignificant when the divisions between North and South, Protestant and Catholic, within Ireland appear insoluble in their horrid vehemence.
Shaw’s story tells of Tom Broadbent, a bluff ninny of an industrious Englishman who wants to set up a hotel and resort area in a patch of rural Ireland. His friend Larry Doyle, an Irish country boy now urbanized and intellectualized in London, reluctantly agrees to accompany him.
The play begins with Broadbent being taken in by a rapscallion con man who embodies all the faith-and-begorrah traits of a stage Irishman. Having wittily disposed of that cliche, Shaw proceeds to draw some caricature types of his own once the ever-sunny Broadbent and the brooding Doyle land among the simple folk of Ireland.
There, they meet Doyle’s sweetheart, Laura Reilly, the enchanting local heiress, with whom Broadbent, an immediate convert to Irish charm, immediately falls in love; Doyle’s canny old father; a loutish farmer neighbor; and Mr. Keegan, a saintly defrocked priest who voices Shaw’s most impassioned speeches on the fate of Ireland.
Running almost three hours, with Shavian talk in abundance, the play is being given a lively revival here by Irish Repertory of Chicago in the upstairs theater of Victory Gardens.
Simply but elegantly set by designer Robert G. Smith with a background of blue sky and on a square platform with a map of Ireland painted on its floor, director Lawrence McGowan’s nicely cast production bounces along brightly and, for the most part, with the right attitude.
The device of having the actors set their scenes by speaking some of Shaw’s stage directions works well enough, although, strangely, some changes in staging details, such as having two characters play chess instead of backgammon, are inexplicable.
As Broadbent, a perfect twit who nonetheless is throbbing with the Shavian Life Force, Robert Kaercher carries the play forward with inexhaustible bonhommie. He’s a boob, as Shaw shows us, but, with Shaw, we can’t help but enjoy him.
Tom Bateman’s Doyle seethes with frustration over the lesser qualities of his countrymen; Laura Scott Wade is an Irish lass to win anyone’s heart, and Bill McGough, as Mr. Keegan, intones his prayers for the land with appropriate gravity.
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John Bull’s Other Island” continues at the Victory Gardens Theatre, 2257 N. Lincoln Ave. through Sept. 30. $23 to $36; 773-871-3000.