Beggars in the House of Plenty

Shanley’s surreal comedy, based on his own experiences growing up in the Bronx, centers around an Irish-American pyromaniac-turned-wordsmith, Johnny, and his slightly demented family. Pop is a narcoleptic, cleaver-wielding hothead; Ma is a coarse harridan given to recounting her violent nightmares to anyone within earshot; and older brother Joey is an eager-to-please, destined-to-fail naval hero who continually disappoints his father because he can’t remember the words to “Danny Boy.” We see these characters through Johnny’s eyes at three stages of his development: childhood, adolescence and adulthood.

Beggars could very easily be precious or sink under the weight of its Freudian clichés, but in the hands of Shanley (better known as the author of the wildly divergent Moonstruck and Doubt) the material is both funny and, in its depiction of the family’s hopeless inability to connect, unexpectedly poignant.

The play proves a good match for Mary-Arrchie. The company’s macabre sensibility lends the wackiness an air of menace and keeps things from getting too airy or silly. John Wilson’s ingenious set (another Mary-Arrchie specialty) is a perfect metaphor for a disintegrating family: What starts as a living room and staircase is dismantled a bit with each scene transition until finally it’s little more than a wooden platform. At the center of all the mayhem is Garcia, who plays Johnny with an intriguing, Holden Caulfield–like air: by turns sharp, sullen and sensitive.