In “Luck of the Irish,” having its Midwest premiere atNext Theatre in Evanston’s Noyes Cultural Arts Center, the Irish don’t have much.
The story is about “ghost buying” in Boston in the 1950s, a maneuver in which a white man was given money by a black man to buy a house for him in a white suburb. After the transaction is complete, the white man receives compensation for his trouble.
Fifty years later, the grandchildren of the black couple are living in the house and it appears that the white couple is now claiming the property as their own.
In this tense drama, written by Kirsten Greenidge, Joe Donovan, first generation Irish, is trying to support a wife and six children under eight years of age with a low-paying job—he needs the windfall this deal will bring. Chris Rickett‘s Joe is a decent but hapless chap from Boston’s South End. His wife Patty Ann takes in ironing to pay the rent on their cramped apartment. While Joe has hopes that things will get better, their situation eats at Patty Ann, who in the hands of Cora Vander Broek becomes the very soul of bitterness.
The highly educated black couple, Dr. Rex Taylor, played by Andre’ Teamer, and his wife Lucy, played by Mildred Marie Langford, are moving to the white suburb so their two daughters can attend the district’s high-ranking public schools. Rex has second thoughts about using his family to break the color barrier, but Lucy stands firm.
The play darts back and forth between 1950, when the deal is made, and 2000, when we meet the granddaughters of Rex and Lucy—Hannah, played by Lily Mojekwu, and Nessa, played by Lucy Sandy—and Hannah’s husband, Rich, played by Austin Talley, and their son, Miles, played byMesiyah Oduro-Kwarten. Hannah wants to sell the house and the title seems to be missing.
The wild card in all this is Joe’s wife, who cannot accept that her black contemporaries are able to give their children a better life than she can give her own. She believes because she is white she is entitled to more and strikes back with the only weapon she thinks she has—the title to the house.
“Luck of the Irish” evokes aspects of Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun,” when the black family moves into a white neighborhood. But this play, especially in the scenes set in 2000, reads like an academic case study charting the results of integrated housing over half a century.
One moment in this racially charged story is graced with poetry: Joe and Lucy recite Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall,” alternating lines one by one during a quiet suburban afternoon.
But don’t look for any happy-go-lucky Irish in this show. Patty Ann has no happiness in her heart, especially for her neighbors.
Next Theatre‘s production of “Luck of the Irish” runs Thursdays to Sundays through February 23 at the Noyes Cultural Arts Center, 927 Noyes St., Suite 108, Evanston. Tickets start at $25. Call 847-475-1875, ext. 2 or visit Next Theatre’s website for more information. Limited free parking is available.
