Jackalope Theatre’s “The Smuggler,” with Andrew Burden Swanson/Photo: Joel Maisonet, Maisonet Photography
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The “Amity Island” in Massachusetts where “The Smuggler” takes place isn’t real—the name alludes to the fictional beach town where the movie “Jaws” is set, the home of not only man-eating sharks but also, and more to the point, shark-like men—and neither is Tim Finnegan, the Irish immigrant narrator-protagonist of this one-man play. But both place and person attain vivid artistic veracity over the course of Jackalope Theatre’s sharp-edged, suspenseful and superbly realized production of Ronán Noone’s eighty-minute-long one-acter, which premiered in 2019, winning Noone the Best Playwright award at the Irish Festival of New York.
It’s actually more of a recited story than an enacted play, with the terrific Andrew Burden Swanson unspooling the tangled tale directly to the audience in a convincing just-off-the-boat brogue, and also voicing half-a-dozen other characters, ranging from flat, R-dropping New Englanders to mellifluous Brazilians. Straw-haired and gawkily charming, a bit cocky when he’s not behind the eight ball, which is often, Swanson’s Finnegan is like Opie from “The Andy Griffith Show,” but all grown-up now and leaning to the dark side. The performance is a tour de force of memorization and verbal impersonation, and if Swanson—as well as director Gus Menary, who imparts a time-bomb intensity to the action—doesn’t garner a Jeff nomination for the role, it will confirm what this noir-tinged, almost-but-not-quite-cynical play contends: that in America, the fix is always in.
Did I mention that the play is (mostly) in rhyme? Not Shakespeare-style blank verse, but more of a sing-songy rapping kind of line, distancing the viewer a bit further from the action on Ryan Emens’ realistic but not overly detailed set, which is somewhere between dive bar and basement man cave (and which is expressively lighted by Claire Sangster). The overtly literary touch reminds us that anti-hero Finnegan—married to a local woman and eager to fit into a community that’s notably inhospitable to foreigners—arrives in Amity as an aspiring writer and artist. In his quest to become a true-blue American, he ends up heading in a very different direction.
Jackalope Theatre’s “The Smuggler,” with Andrew Burden Swanson/Photo: Joel Maisonet, Maisonet Photography
At heart a decent if weak-willed guy, who makes and breaks promises with God about forswearing his increasingly criminal ways, Finnegan has the bad luck to be one of the working poor in a country where poverty is viewed not as a social problem or byproduct of capitalism, but rather as a sign of moral dereliction and personal failure. Pressured by his demanding, unsympathetic wife—who, one begins to realize, isn’t just a spouse but also an embodiment of the country he’s trying to prove he’s worthy of—and her hostile, hypocritical family, Finnegan begins his slide (or is it rise?) from personable, easygoing, PBR-quaffing naïf saddled with crushing responsibilities to small-scale gangster, involved in trafficking people very much like himself.
As with most Irish tales, there are elements of humor here, including some comic bits about the dysfunctional in-laws and an overlong, overdone scene about a battle with an enraged cellar rat—the show’s only rough patch. But there’s nothing funny about Finnegan’s mounting helplessness and humiliation, climaxing in his brain-free brother-in-law snapping at him, “You’re nothing but an immigrant,” or in his once-normal marriage turning into a Macbeth-like criminal conspiracy, or his description of the sensation in his innermost being the first time he compromises his integrity. It’s solid, gripping writing, delivered with crystalline sincerity, and it hits like a sledgehammer.
This is one of those plays that leaves a slightly bitter aftertaste, lacking as it does any hint of poetic justice. We see the world through narrator Finnegan’s eyes, and what he perceives isn’t a choice between right and wrong. It’s between remaining an immigrant, a victim, on the wrong side of the class and caste divide, or becoming an American, and exploiting that divide for his own ends. The logic of the situation dictates that he grasp at the opportunity presented to him, as this is what newcomers are supposed to do in the land of opportunity. Middle-class moralists may excoriate immoral behavior and official corruption, but, as “The Smuggler” shows, finger-wagging doesn’t change the social and economic forces that drive mass migration and the exploitation of immigrant labor. Nor does it help the Finnegans of the world, who find that they have buried their true self in the well-tended yard behind the pretty house and white picket fence of the achieved American Dream.
Long based in the Broadway Armory, Jackalope presents “The Smuggler” in its new home, the teeny-tiny coach house at Berger Park on the lake. The company moved there because the Armory has been repurposed as a shelter for migrants, whose histories of poverty, danger, displacement and disorientation are variants on the plot of this play. “The Smuggler” is a powerful experience, a work of high artistry that bleeds over into the real world, right now. As the show ends and the crowd exits, processing the emotionally harrowing and morally challenging story they’ve just witnessed, the Rolling Stones’ haunting “Sympathy for the Devil” echoes across the empty stage. In a show full of right choices, it’s the perfect closing note.
Presented by Jackalope Theatre Company through March 16 at Berger Park, 6205 North Sheridan. Tickets are $15-$25; available at (773)340-2543 or JackalopeTheatre.org.
