Howie the Rookie

Let me just begin with what is truly important. Carrying a one-man show requires an exceptionally gifted and courageous actor, but when you add to that the eccentric and peculiar needs of a show like Mark O’Rowe’s Howie the Rookie, those words don’t even begin to capture what kind of actor you need. Nevan Richard is that kind of actor, but I can’t say I knew the full extent of that, based on the couple of readings I did with him for Fertile Ground and PDX Playwrights. Sometimes I will go to a show like this with the idea that it’s good to be supportive of actors you’ve worked with, and maintain good friendships for possible future endeavors. But I have to come clean here: I had no idea, not really.

This is, in many ways, more challenging than something like Sex, Drugs, and Rock N Roll by Eric Bogosian, and similar one-man feats, in that those plays are mostly angry rants about politics, religion, social injustice, and anything else the playwright wants to get on his/her soapbox about. Anybody, given a stage and an audience, can rant and rave for 90 minutes. But O’Rowe’s play is actually about the art of storytelling, and it takes that art very seriously. I’m not going to talk a lot about the story in this review because that’s The Howie’s job, and The Rookie’s. I wouldn’t dare deprive you of their colorful renderings in order to give you some cheap-ass, watered-down synopsis so that whoever you might want to take to this thing on a date can ask you “What’s it about?” Wait and see, only buckle up because it’s a bumpy ride.

What I can tell you is that the action takes place in Dublin, amid a sort of macho world of adolescent male punks and female skanks. (Sorry if that seems derogatory; my words are mild by comparison to this play, which really pulls no punches at all.)  An epic 24-hour story is told from the perspectives of two young men who share a last name, The Howie Lee and the Rookie Lee. In the past, these characters have not always been played by a single actor; in other productions, the differences between the two men might be more apparent. In this one, while they are different, you get an interesting insight into what they have in common, which is more than just the last name and a Nevan-like face.

Director Matthew Jared Lee does an amazing job with very little, in terms of creating atmosphere before the play even begins. A tattered chain link fence, littered with large plastic bags of garbage, an empty paint bucket, beer cans, and the ubiquitous wooden rehearsal box that you see in many black box-type shows, this one sprayed with graffiti like “ugly fat cunt”…told you. A playlist full of what sounds like multi-genres of Irish bands on an Irish radio station (I want that playlist), leading up to a full minute of dimly lit atmospheric sounds of Dublin at night. This is, of course, accentuated by the fact that the tiny venue of Shout House, home of Hand2Mouth Theatre, is located under the Hawthorne Bridge and a block or two away from the train tracks. Honestly, long before Howie (or the Rookie in the second act) stepped onto the stage, I felt like I was really in this grimy, sometimes sinister urban setting. And no joke, if you’re sitting in the front row, as is my habit to do because of my short stature and need for good sightlines, you are right there in the action, and the actor—and the action—is in your face. My only regret about this was a brief self-consciousness in the first act, which tried to steel my attention from the narrative. (And honestly, I wondered if our actor maybe would have preferred that no one sit in the front row, at least no one he knew. That’s a theatre etiquette topic that I’m constantly wondering about.)

Something about one-man shows and their narrative structure is that you have to pay very close attention; you cannot let your mind wander for a moment, or you may lose the thread of the story. I did lose it a couple times, but was thankfully able to pick it back up. Another thing that keeps you on your toes is a thick Irish dialect (well done in this case, and that ain’t easy) and a glossary of slang that is included in the program. I actually would have liked to get the glossary a day or so ahead of time so that I could actually memorize the terms!  Also, the character’s names are as colorful as the language. The Peaches (not a chick), Flann Dingle (not a Mexican dessert), Ladyboy (no lady and no boy), and Puddin’ Boy. All these people and more cross in and out of The Howie and the Rookie’s lives and leave an impact that is alternately hilarious, shocking and tragic. (I may be sounding a bit like the PR in that last sentence…sorry.)  HERE IS A WORLD [movie voice] that most of us never will be dropped into, 2 men whose lives many of us would not come remotely close to intersecting, but you leave them and their world feeling profoundly affected and grateful you were there for a while, even if it costs you a bit of sadness. Precisely the type of the show I am always trying to create myself, and to see.

Bartender, a shot of Bushmills for everyone!