Find an event
The Tallest Man
Young rascal Finbar McDonough (Shane Kenyon) is set on marrying the girl of his dreams, the plucky Katie (Marta Evans), daughter of the richest and meanest woman in County Mayo, Ireland, 1895. Katie longs for life in New York, but her mother, Breda (Miranda Zola), can’t bear to lose her—especially not to a tinker (or Irish gypsy), which Finbar, naturally, is. When he gets a tip on a horse race from a Ghost of the Potato Famine (or his long-lost uncle), however, his sudden windfall seems poised to make his dreams come true. Complications accrue from a pair of dullard drunkards, a greedy priest, a despicable English rent collector and Finbar’s duty to his aging mother and young cousin.
This is the rich stuff of old Irish yarns, and Chicago playwright Lynch’s new script, developed over the past two years at the Artistic Home, draws on the tales he heard from his Irish family as a child. The production is solid, and Kenyon and Nick Horst (as Finbar’s earnest cousin Frankie) are a source of life, but the play feels oddly remote for a new work. The economic hardships, the prejudice, the longing for escape, which should be so familiar today, drag under the weight of a few drooping scenes and emotional climaxes that feel unearned. A handsome twist at the play’s end would crackle with delight if told around a caravan fire but onstage is too unclear to have an immediate effect. Unlike the ghosts it evokes, it won’t keep you up at night.
