Theater Review—

Long Wharf’s Dramatic Monologue ‘The Good Thief’ Is Powerful And Gripping

By Julie Stern

There’s an old gag that  goes “if the harpsichordist Wanda Landowska were to marry Howard Hughes and then divorce him to marry Henry Kissinger, she’d be Wanda Hughes Kissinger now…”

Conor McPherson’s The Good Thief, a dramatic monologue that lasts a mere seventy minutes, leaving many in the audience including this reviewer disappointed that it was ending so soon,  manages to interweave themes of Albert Camus and Micky Spillane  in a coating of  Brian Friel or Sean O’Casey.

The nameless actor who tells his story is a professional “frightener,” a thug hired by gangsters to terrify their victims into paying up. He may use violence, arson, and even gunfire to make his point, but he has never killed anyone; at least, not until the pivotal weekend when things go wrong, precipitating the rambling tale full of unexpected twists that alternate the droll with the horrific to make up this play.

Sent to scare a warehouse owner, the actor/narrator is caught in an ambush and double-crossed by his employer. With two men killed and a trio of other thugs about to kill him, the actor/narrator manages to escape, taking with him the wife and child of the murdered man, and they go on the lam together. In his tentative concern for their welfare and in his genuine enjoyment of the wife and children of the old army buddy who takes them in, he reveals a yearning for human relationships and a different kind of life.

Tough but appealing in his frank, confidential manner of a stranger talking to you in a pub, the actor draws his audience in as he tries to explain it all, exactly as it happened. An alcoholic who drinks continuously to get his head straight, he is reminiscent of the Camus novels The Stranger (about the alienated man who kills an Arab on the beach) and The Fall (a dramatic monologue set in an Amsterdam bar where the speaker gets the reader to like and identify with him, at which point he reveals his guilt, which the reader must share as well, implying that we all need absolution)

These larger resonances are repeated in the title, which is a reference to St Dismas, the “good thief,” who died on the cross next to Jesus. In an Arabic version of the story he is identified as a robber who waylaid the Holy Family and then released them, with the words “Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” In time, Dismas became the special patron of thieves and prisoners.

At the same time, the rugged language and constant casual references to sex and violence trigger memories of I The Jury and My Gun is Quick.  And with it all, there is McPherson’s unfailing ability to convey the atmosphere of Ireland. His play The Weir portrayed the backwater of a rural village. The Good Thief captures the mean streets and seedy pubs of urban Dublin as effectively as any of the great Irish playwrights.

Dan Cordle, who plays the actor/narrator, is superb, and Carl Forsman’s direction makes this a powerful and gripping piece.