Fitting Entertainment for Pints

Turns out people were crying out for theater on the southside.

O'Theater at O'Toole's welcomed in more people than they had chairs for to see a staged reading of "The Playboy of the Western World.'

Touted as "plays and pints," tonight was the first in a series of summer readings.

The organizers must be Irish because they brilliantly got Murphy's Irish Stout to sponsor the series and, even better, 100% of the proceeds from the sale of that stout went to the actors.

There's the way to get actors to work -pay them in beer.

And while I don't drink beer, I'm plenty Irish (hello, O'Donnell)  and a theater lover of the highest order.

With only one rehearsal under their belts, the cast did a terrific job with a 1907 play about a man who stumbles into a pub, claiming to have killed his father.

You're a fine, hearty girl who'd knock the heads together of any men in the room.

The Irish accents took a bit of getting used to, just like they do in a movie.

Two fine women fighting for the likes of me. I'm thinking this night, wasn't I a foolish fellow not to kill my father in the years gone by?

DeeJay Gray played Christy, the supposed murderer, to perfection, marveling at his new identity as a sought-after man for the first time in his life.

Billy Christopher Maupin played Shawn with a big voice and a timid demeanor, the cowering suitor of the pub owner's daughter, Pegeen, and was hysterical, worried about everything possible.

We'd been warned in advance that the play had two intermissions, the better to relieve ourselves of all that stout we were drinking.

I like a theater group that thinks ahead.

It's the likes of me she's only fit for.

In the second act, David Bridgewater showed up as the father who'd been maimed but not killed and immediately made the audience laugh with his ad-libbing.

Revealing his bandaged head where his son had clobbered him, he was asked who'd hit him.

Momentarily losing his place but eyes twinkling, he looked at the audience and paused. "Wait for it...my own son!" and the crowd cracked up.

The father wastes no time in telling the pub crowd what his son was really like, which was nothing like the brave murderer they'd assumed.

He wasn't even the smooth womanizer they'd taken him for.

If he saw a red petticoat coming over the hill, he'd be running away.

As more women clamored for Christy, he reveled in all the attention.

She'll knock the head off you, I'm thinking.

The pints of stout continued to arrive from the bar during the second intermission, a sure sign everybody was having a good time.

I know I was.

I'm taking a fancy to you.

By Act 3, the other pub denizens were getting a bit tired of Christy's boasting.

He's not able to say ten words without bragging about killing his father.

It was in the final act that we also got a limerick, courtesy of Gordon Bass, who played the drunken pub owner, Pegeen's father.

There was a young man from Kent
Whose tool was exceedingly bent
He put it in double
To save himself trouble
Instead of coming, he went

You can imagine the raucous laughter heard from a roomful of stout-swilling people after that delivery.

What is it to make a woman like me fitting entertainment for the likes of you?

When Pegeen scorns Shawn for Christy, she explains to her father why.

There's no savagery or fine words in him at all.

Savagery aside, what woman doesn't want fine words from her beloved?

By the end, Christy is gone and she woefully laments, "I've lost the only playboy of the western world."

Others, however, saw the positive side of his absence.

For the love of god, we'll have peace now for our drinks.

Maybe it's the Irish in me talking, but frankly, peace for drinking is over-rated.

"Plays and Pints," however, is not. Drink on, theater lovers.