‘Outside Mullingar’ brings rural Irish romance to Geffen Playhouse

Randall Arney’s job as a director is to take stories and retell them, incorporating his own actors and visions into the script. He has grown fond of Irish plays in particular, he said, because of their prose and emotion.

“It’s something about (the Irish),” said Arney, the artistic director at the Geffen Playhouse. “They make wonderful storytellers, wonderful playwrights; there’s a real tradition of wonderful Irish plays in history.”

Arney’s latest production is “Outside Mullingar,” a romantic comedy written by award-winning Irish-American playwright John Patrick Shanley. Originally debuting in New York City in 2014, the Tony Award-nominated play will premiere at the Geffen Playhouse Tuesday night.

In “Outside Mullingar,” the playwright illustrates the hardships and difficulties of finding one’s other half, injecting the story with comedy, romance and darkness, Arney said.

Set in the outskirts of Mullingar, Ireland, the play is a tale about two lifelong neighbors, Anthony and Rosemary, who eventually see each other in a new light and fall in love. Both from farming families, they are growing into adulthood as they watch over their sick parents.

For Dan Donohue, who plays Anthony, his character is out of touch with the people around him, unmotivated to let love into his life for fear of getting hurt.

Rosemary on the other hand, played by Jessica Collins, is unwilling to show her true feelings for Anthony because of her prideful personality. Collins said she empathizes with her character’s struggle against emotions.

“She gets in her own way a lot, which I also do, even when I don’t want to,” Collins said.

Rosemary’s sensitive side slowly reveals itself throughout the play, Collins said. For instance, in one of the opening scenes, Rosemary’s father passes away. At that moment, Collins said she drops her character’s tough exterior, and instead conveys sorrow, grief and dismay.

Donohue and Collins placed special emphasis on representing their characters honestly and accurately. Portraying the nuanced personality within each role was difficult, they said, because overexpressing an emotion prematurely would easily give away a character before being fully developed.

Neither Rosemary nor Anthony is living life fully, they said. They avoid the risks of openness and vulnerability, an issue that Donohue feels many people can relate to.

Donohue described Anthony as an emotionally guarded man going through the motions in his life.

“He’s sensitive to the world and to his own situation, feeling excluded because of how he perceives himself,” he said.

Donohue sees that Anthony struggles to cope with his insecurities, which makes him a more relatable character. He said people, to some extent, are afraid of exposing themselves to the potential pitfalls of love and relationships.

Donohue said watching the characters overcome their differences and eventually come together is painstaking, but ultimately rewarding.

“The way that (the play) unravels is so cathartic,” he said. “It demands an emotional release in the characters, as well as the audience.”

Donohue hopes the audience will feel the characters’ tension between accepting reality and hiding behind a protective emotional barrier.

The depth the actors extract from these fictional roles, Arney said, demonstrates the parallels drawn between the characters and real life.

He said the play needs a live audience for the parallels to come across because the audience will relate strongly to the emotional struggle of the characters.

“What happens outside Mullingar to these rural people is so much what happens to all of us,” Arney said. “It takes just a minute or two to learn who these people are beyond being Irish and at that point it’s universal.”