‘The Seafarer’: A Christmas of Shadows and Spirits at Palm Beach Dramaworks

 

The anonymous epigram to this play, The Seafarer (c. 755 A.D.), truly sets the stage: it is our fate to be adrift, “wretched and anxious,” alone in an icy ocean of indifference, braving the vicissitudes of existence.   

 

Hence, I’ll make no bones about it: ‘The Seafarer’ by Conor McPherson may not appeal to everyone, particularly anyone seeking pure holiday cheer.  The play unfolds over a Dublin Christmas Eve, its mood reflected in the disheveled home shared by brothers Sharky and Richard.  Their artificial Christmas tree hints a deeper bleakness.  Both men are alcoholics, Sharky temporarily on the wagon, Richard blind and apparently making up for both of them with gusto.  Irish whiskey and potent Irish moonshine (poteen) are practically other characters in the play, fogging memory, judgment, and hope for anyone in their orbit.

 

The Palm Beach Dramaworks set is so striking upon entering the theater: every thread of the brothers’ lives is visible on its walls, family photos, Irish football memorabilia, and religious artifacts, all representing better past times.  Ironically, horseshoes hang at an entrance, in keeping with old Irish folklore meant to ward off evil. Anne Mundell’s scenic design works its magic before the play even begins, with a special shout-out to Jillian Feigenblat, PBD’s prop manager, and Celeste Parrendo, scenic artist.

 

‘The Seafarer’ is a play firmly within the tradition of modern Irish drama, a vein Palm Beach Dramaworks has tapped before: The Beauty Queen of Leenane, Dancing at Lughnasa, Outside Mullingar, and The Cripple of Inishmaan.  PBD knows how to honor the dark humor, dashed hopes, and battered resilience that define this territory.  So while the play may not offer the familiar comforts of ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ or ‘A Christmas Carol’, it has its own rewards for those willing to lean into the shadows.

 

True to the lineage Sean O’Casey carved out a century ago, McPherson gives us Dubliners on the edge, irresponsible, alcohol-fueled, clinging to camaraderie, wit, and bluster.  McPherson also adds something contemporary drama has embraced, a touch of magical realism.  Enter Mr. Lockhart; yes, the name is a hint, whose interest in Sharky is more infernal than social.  Offstage, Karen and Eileen, exasperated and long-suffering, exert their influence, two women who have clearly had it up to here with their men.

 

In the hands of director J. Barry Lewis and an extraordinary cast, these characters emerge with specificity rather than slipping into caricature.  Casting has long been one of Palm Beach Dramaworks’ strengths.  Resident Costume Designer Brian O’Keefe delivers masterful designs that reinforce each character’s distinct personality.

 

Declan Mooney, Sheffield Chastain, Rod Brogan, Michael Mellamphy, Rob Donohoe; Photo by Jason Nuttle

Declan Mooney is Sharky Harkin, our hapless protagonist, confronting the wreckage of his past while attempting sobriety, on a holiday of all times, and facing a reckoning that threatens nothing less than his soul.  Mooney brings a confident familiarity to the role, having served as understudy in the original Broadway production, directed by McPherson himself.  His portrayal of Sharky’s tragic flaws, a life marked by failure, generates more pity than hopefulness.  He is stoic at times, hyperventilating at others.

 

The always dependable and versatile Rob Donohoe is his blind brother Richard Harkin, hell-bent on gathering everyone for a drunken Christmas Eve card game.  Richard lost his sight in a dumpster-diving misadventure and now relies on, and demands, Sharky’s attention for his every whim.  Though often in a drunken stupor, he has learned to manipulate his younger brother through humorous guilt trips and accusations.

 

He is a central force in this production, around whom the other characters orbit, except, perhaps, Mr. Lockhart.  Richard even enlists his friends to go outside with him and his cane to chase away ne’er-do-wells, winos who are even more unruly than he and his companions, and whom Richard feels he can still intimidate.  Conveniently, this clears the stage for uninterrupted, more profound exchanges inside, but it also reveals something essential, Richard’s need to believe there exists at least one tier below him.

 

For further comic relief, look to their friend Ivan, who is another step-and-fetch-it for Richard.  Ivan is functionally blind himself, having misplaced his glasses after a night of heroic drinking.  Sheffield Chastain (PBD debut) plays a hilarious, hopeless, and endearing Ivan Curry, with a gift for physical comedy, stumbling through a myopic fog (which ultimately bears on the play’s resolution).  The playwright milks the missing glasses for all they’re worth, as Ivan literally “feels his way around.”  Yet all is not mirth: Ivan harbors “shameful secrets” known to Mr. Lockhart.  Chastain delivers one of the play’s most memorable lines with perfect timing and drunken profundity: “It’s Christmas for fuck’s sake!” the play’s version of “God bless us, everyone!”

 

Richard has also invited his friend Nicky, now partnered with Sharky’s ex-lover Eileen, to the card game, much to Sharky’s dismay.  Michael Mellamphy (PBD debut) plays Nicky Giblin with an unsettling undercurrent of feigned happiness and bravado.  His Versace jacket and driving Eileen’s car (really Sharky’s) represent high points in an otherwise diminished life.

 

With free-flowing poteen fueling tensions later in the play, conflict erupts in a flurry of swings and shoves.  In the aftermath, Mellamphy showcases his comic flair with a line delivered to Richard: “Sharky’s left hook is nothing compared to Eileen’s, I’ll tell you.”  Richard responds, “She wouldn’t hit you, Nicky.”  Mellamphy fires back with a humorous but revealing retort: “It’s the force of her words, Richard! Fucking pin you up against a wall.”

 

Nicky arrives accompanied by Mr. Lockhart, who believes he has come to collect what Sharky owes him.  Rod Brogan (PBD debut) is an elegant Mr. Lockhart who, as the evening wears on, conspicuously holds his drink, his composure sharply contrasting with the others’ inebriation.  Brogan’s actions and reactions are quietly demonic, often accompanied by a knowing smirk and a sense of omniscience.

 

The card game becomes the arena in which he intends to collect on a bet Sharky made twenty-five years earlier in a jail cell on another Christmas Eve, a promise of a rematch for his soul (apparently a busy time for Mr. Lockhart, resting until Good Friday for the past two thousand-plus years).

 

Declan Mooney, Michael Mellamphy, Rod Brogan, Rob Donahue, and Sheffield Chastain; Photo by Jason Nuttle

Brogan leans fully into the demonic nature of the role, delivering Lockhart’s long monologue with careful, menacing articulation.  On death (“you go over a cliff so silently and the dusk swallows you so completely, you don’t ever come back”), on eternity (“time is bigger and blacker and so much more boundless than you could ever have thought possible with your puny broken mind”), and on hell itself (a “permanent and crippling form of self-loathing” thousands of miles beneath an icy sea, in a coffin-like space).  Lockhart is entirely in his element with these proclamations, preying on self-destruction, turning a poker game into a battle for a soul.

 

The stage is thus set for discord and confrontation that yield McPherson’s themes: addiction, guilt, and the possibility of redemption, all rendered in rhythmic, darkly comic dialogue that captures the cadence of Irish speech.  The play is bleak, funny, and at times unexpectedly moving, a Christmas story for those who find the season more complicated than the usual carols might admit.  Perhaps that is why ‘The Seafarer,’ for all its shadows, feels oddly comforting, it understands the holiday more honestly than most.

 

This is a stunning ensemble production, a collective triumph, with Director J. Barry Lewis guiding both cast and creative team toward something more ambitious than a straightforward staging.  That is no small accomplishment, given the complexity of the themes, and at a time of year when mistletoe is generally preferred over existential angst.

 

Lighting design is by Genny Wynn, and sound design by Roger Arnold, whose omnipresent chilling wind, rising and falling, adds to the play’s otherworldliness.  David A. Hyland is the fight choreographer and Jennifer Burke the dialect coach.

 

We move inexorably toward the ending we expect, followed by a sudden deus ex machina, a Christmas gift of a double ending: an apparent redemption, or merely another chance to relive the same mistakes.  In a world defined by regret and missed chances, McPherson allows the play to close on something quieter and more human, a moment of grace among friends, and an unmistakable bond between brothers.  It is not salvation, exactly, but it is connection, and for these men, that may be miracle enough.

 

Palm Beach Dramaworks Finds the Man Behind the Martyr in ‘The Mountaintop’

 

Katori Hall’s ‘The Mountaintop’ begins not with history’s public moment but with its imagined private foremath—Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. alone in Room 306 at the Lorraine Motel on the night before his assassination. Earlier that evening, he had delivered the now-prophetic “Mountaintop” speech at Mason Temple, speaking of a promised land he might never reach.

 

Hall has said the play was inspired by a story from her mother, Carrie Mae, who as a teenager longed to hear King that night but, at her own mother’s urging, stayed home “It would be the greatest regret of my mother’s life,” Hall recalled, adding that the fear and foreboding surrounding King’s final days became part of her “bloody heritage.”

 

From that personal history came a work that mingles the spiritual and the intimate. In Hall’s imagining, King’s solitude is interrupted by a motel maid named Camae—named for her mother—who compels him to confront his life and legacy, “warts and all.” He is no longer just an icon, but a man of humor, fear, and doubt, a human being vulnerable like the rest of us.

 

Hall infuses the play with passion and magical realism. Director Belinda (Be) Boyd makes the magical element feel organic, suspending disbelief as Camae’s true identity—as an angel guiding King toward another promised land—slowly emerges. When rose petals fall from heaven confirming her purpose, the effect is otherworldly yet utterly convincing in the hands of Boyd and her gifted creative team.

 

Palm Beach Dramaworks’ production stars Christopher Marquis Lindsay (in his PBD debut) as Martin Luther King Jr. and Rita Cole as Camae. Their chemistry commands the stage; both give performances that are inspired and deeply moving.

 

Lindsay’s portrayal captures a man on edge—pacing, restless, as much fixated on his missing Pall Mall cigarettes as he is tormented by the refrain, “America’s going to hell.” From the opening muttered parody of “My Country, ’Tis of Thee' (“My country who doles out constant misery”) to his vision of a multicultural America “banding together to shame this country,” Lindsay channels King’s anguish over what is—and his faith in what could be. His performance moves through the stages of grief until, bargaining exhausted, he accepts his fate with grace. The actor disappears into the man.

 

Cole nearly steals the show as Camae, the “new maid” who seems to know far too much. She listens lovingly as King speaks to his family on the phone, her eyes betraying both empathy and knowledge. Her line, “Nonsense comin’ out of a pretty woman’s mouth ain’t nonsense at all—it’s poetry,” feels like a credo for her performance.

 

She’s electrifying as she playfully dons King’s jacket, climbs on the bed, and delivers the militant speech she imagines he might give, King acknowledging “Maybe the voice of violence is the only voice white folks will listen to.… They hate so easily and we love too much.” What begins as a humorous oratory reveals a painful truth.

 

As Camae transforms from maid to angel, Cole’s intensity deepens. When King asks whether the future is “as beautiful as you,” her rueful and ironic “It’s as ugly as me” feels prophetic. He replies, “I wanna see it.” She warns, “It might break your heart.” That exchange leads to a stirring montage of images—courtesy of projection designer Adam J. Thompson—tracing the march of history since King’s death, much of it steeped in violence but culminating in images of our first black President.

 

Boyd directs with loving precision, orchestrating moments of laughter and tenderness amid tragedy. A pillow fight, a tickle fight—each moment of levity heightens the pathos that follows. The one-act, intermissionless play moves briskly, yet allows room for emotion and reflection. Lindsay and Cole, both consummate professionals, own the stage.

 

Nikolas Serrano’s scenic design captures the Lorraine Motel in painstaking realism—the neon sign glowing ominously through rain that turns to snow. Genny Wynn’s lighting and Roger Arnold’s sound accent the drama with lightning, thunder, and shifting tones. Brian O’Keefe’s costumes root us in 1968, right down to the holes in King’s socks.

 

If you are of a certain age, the assassinations of the 1960s remain seared in memory: John F. Kennedy in 1963, Malcolm X in 1965, Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, and two months later, Robert F. Kennedy. Those events are etched in our hearts as much as our history.

 

The hopeful ending of The Mountaintop feels hard-won—and, given today’s climate of anger and division, perhaps fragile. The violence and intolerance King sought to overcome still haunt our politics and our streets. The baton he passes in the play seems to fall from our grasp again and again. Yet as this production reminds us, we must keep reaching for it, believing—as King did—that the arc of history can still bend toward justice.

 

Palm Beach Dramaworks’ ‘The Mountaintop’ captures that fragile faith with beauty and power. Lindsay’s demeanor and voice become King’s at that final moment, transcendent and sonorous, feeling like he is reaching out through the fourth wall, urging us to continue the work he could not finish. It is another Palm Beach Dramaworks ‘must see’ production, a stunning beginning to the 2025/26 season.

 

All Photographs of Christopher Lindsay and Rita Cole by Curtis Brown Photography