The actor John Keating is usually a tall bag of bones with fright-wig hair and frightened-deer eyes, a look developed for character sections. That he nabs the guide job in Laoisa Sexton’s “The Pigeon while in the Taj Mahal” in the Irish Repertory Theater is cause enough to see it, even when the Engage in’s protracted execution wears out the prickly attraction of its premise.
Mr. Keating plays the Pigeon in the title, a sweater-clad, Elvis-quoting naïf who life in a trailer park in rural Eire. Is he lonesome tonight? Not exactly. But he’s Evidently thrilled to locate a youthful girl in smeared make-up and ripped tulle dumped on his doorstep. “You have the unheard of natural beauty,” he claims to her unconscious kind. “Just like am dao gia moi nhat a swan in a filthy lake!” This can be Lolly (Ms. Sexton), a plastered bride-to-be overdosed on vodka and system glitter. On waking, she first threatens Pigeon having a hammer and afterwards softens at his odd hospitality.
The moment Lolly is kind of awake, Ms. Sexton has superior enjoyable contrasting her shallow town models with Pigeon’s callow means. “D’you bought iPhone, d’you do?” she whines. “I phone?” the perplexed Pigeon asks. But as they remain in the trailer, the play starts to spin its motionless wheels. There’s a great deal of dialogue and plenty of depredation, Particularly after An additional bachelorette (Zoë Watkins) arrives, but owning set these characters alongside one another, Ms. Sexton as well as the director, Alan Cox, don’t know really what to do with them. Irrespective of a persistent concept of innocence and encounter, and a few questions on the position of folklore in modern Eire, “The Pigeon from the Taj Mahal” primarily feels like a just one-act that outgrew by itself. Rather less dialogue wouldn’t damage.
But motion concerns Ms. Sexton significantly below furnishing a vigorous, sometimes vulgar showcase for herself and another actors. A deft performer, she Plainly enjoys Lolly’s woozy, crude obliviousness, but she's just as satisfied to cede the phase to Mr. Keating. Pigeon isn’t a wholly credible character, but Mr. Keating lends him heat and a mild type of bravery, even although carrying lipstick in addition to a penis headband. Cheers to Ms. Sexton for permitting this distinct actor distribute his wings.