Porchlight Music Theatre’s “The Irish… and How They Got That Way,” with Luke Nowakowski, Leah Morrow, Emily Goldberg and Michael Mahler/Photo: Anthony Robert La Penna

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What are the people of Ireland called versus what do immigrants of Irish descent call themselves, even generations later? The answer is the same. The Irish.

Irish American author Frank McCourt recognized this fact when he wrote “The Irish… and How They Got That Way.”

The lovely ambiguity of the title is how the “That Way” the Irish got is presumed but never specified.

McCourt was a New York public high school history teacher for nearly thirty years before becoming a Pulitzer Prize-winning and best-selling author in his sixties with his 1996 memoir, “Angela’s Ashes.” He acted in plays at the Irish Repertory Theatre on the side.

Born in Brooklyn but raised in Ireland before returning to the States as a young adult, McCourt became a lifetime chronicler of stories of Irish history, culture and songs on three-by-five index cards. Asked to cobble together an evening based on these for an Irish Repertory Theatre gala was how “The Irish” came about.

It is a narrated revue more than a musical, and that has led to some banal performances filled with blarney brogues and Irish-tenor wannabes. Happily, the current Porchlight Music Theatre production that is directed by David Girolmo treats the work in a more dramatic and integrated fashion, complete with a ship as a backdrop.

Porchlight Music Theatre’s “The Irish… and How They Got That Way,” with Elleon Dobias/Photo: Anthony Robert La Penna

Each of the six performers—two female and two male singing actors on stage with a pianist and violinist to the side—function as an ensemble in both the storytelling and the singing. Sometimes a guitar or mandolin was added, and sometimes a bodhrán (though the piano was overpowering the violin at the matinee I saw). Four-part harmony was often skillfully and effectively employed, sometimes even on numbers that are usually performed solo, such as “Danny Boy,” which featured pianist and music director David Fiorello singing the lead.

Despite the wide variety of types of songs presented from ballads, anthems, protest songs, Tin Pan Alley and even U2, the style and approach was that of hanging out in an Irish pub. It almost broke the fourth wall in that the cast was portrayed with pints and mugs filled with what certainly appeared to be beer in the clear ones. Shots were later poured from real bottles, whatever may have been in them. Of course, the stereotype of the Irish as drinkers and alcoholics is even a stated part of McCourt’s prose.

The story of the massive Irish immigration to America due to the mid-nineteenth century Irish Potato Famine, the prejudices encountered once here and the ways Irish Americans transformed American culture and politics since is really the major theme of “Irish.”

For those of us who lived through perhaps the most defining era of this, the presidency of John F. Kennedy, the penultimate number that eulogizes him with “Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ye” is a real tear-jerker.

Still, what makes “Irish” work is that no matter how sad things may get, there is always an aura of celebration.

Porchlight Music Theatre’s “The Irish… and How They Got That Way” is through March 15 at Ruth Page Center for the Arts, 1016 North Dearborn. Tickets are $70-$98, available at porchlightmusictheatre.org.