Quick-change artist

By Joseph Hurley

MISTERMAN, by Enda Walsh. Featuring George Heslin. Directed by David DeBeck. At the Irish Arts Center, 553 West 51st St., NYC. Through Feb. 2.

With its grimy, time-stained walls of once-white tiling, the setting could be a holding pen in some remote police station, or, just as easily, a locked room in a neglected mental institution.

A bunk bed lines up against the back wall, and a nondescript grayish man’s suit hangs in a small cove in the left-hand side of the space.

Whatever else it is or is not, this raw, nearly empty room is the universe in which Tom McGill, the central figure of Dublin playwright Enda Walsh’s “Misterman,” exists. Except, of course, in those moments when, “liberated” by his delusions, the deranged “hero” of the compelling, disturbing 43-minute monologue, relives moments from his dreary life in the small Irish town of Inishfree or, at the other end of the scale, visits heaven itself, where he conducts a series of dialogues with the supreme deity, with whom he appears to be on reasonably intimate terms.

The well-paced, absorbing production of “Misterman,” which is playing at the Irish Arts Center, marks the American debut of the playwright, whose new work, “Bedhound,” opened last week at London’s Royal Court Theatre.

“Misterman” is performed by George Heslin, with brief assistance from actresses Aideen O’Kelly and Lisa Sexton, whose voices are heard on a tape in the “boombox” McGill obsessively carries, almost as though it were grafted onto his shoulder.

The tendency manifested in recent seasons on the part of young Irish writers to work in the one-actor mode probably owes something to Conor McPherson, who achieved success with solo shows such as “St. Nicholas” and “The Good Thief,” and whose five-character success, “The Weir,” was still composed primarily of monologues.

More recently, Mark O’Rowe made his name with “Howie the Rookie,” a two-character play in which two actors, each working alone, before and after an intermission, related sequential segments of a single, ongoing story.

The urge toward monologues, understandably enough, is often felt by writers who had started out as actors, a pattern followed by the 30-year-old Walsh, who played McGill when “Misterman” was first produced in Dublin.

The apparently youthful Tom has lived, it seems, for a considerable period of time, following the death of his shopkeeper father, alone with his possibly demented, certainly invalid mother, identified only as “Mammy,” and voiced for the current production by actress O’Kelly. Late in the play’s brief running time, a second female voice is heard, that of a young girl named Edel, spoken by actress Sexton, recently seen in the off-off-Broadway revival of Joe Penhall’s vivid “Some Voices,” another work dealing with madness and its effects.

Playing Tom McGill requires an actor to play a taxing collection of Inishfree inhabitants ranging from a curious neighbor, Mrs. O’Leary, and the overly chatty Charlie McInerny to garage owner Eamon Moran and the libidinous tea shop operator, Mrs. Cleary, who desires romance, while the boy’s wishes go no further than the piece of cheesecake he’d come to the shop to enjoy.

In all, the actor is required to provide quick, facile thumbnail sketches of perhaps nearly a dozen citizens, most of whom he encounters in his wanderings in and around the town.

This subtle task George Heslin, recently seen in the Roundabout Theatre Company’s much-praised revival of Sean O’Casey’s “Juno and the Paycock,” accomplishes with grace, style and insight, but it is in his compassionate portrayal of the twisted, doomed Tom McGill that he really shines.

A 29-year-old Limerick native who has divided his time between Dublin and New York for the last six years, Heslin somehow manages to create a Tom McGill who doesn’t lose audience sympathy, even as he edges closer to abject madness, and as his acts become more violently loathsome.

Tom is perhaps victim of the life circumstances that have descended upon him, unbidden. His existence is both cramped and stifling, and madness could be said to have been his soul’s only escape route from the confinement in which his joyless days are lived.

Director David DeBeck has staged “Misterman” with a kind of brisk, energized economy that seems to suit Walsh’s words and rhythms ideally, setting a tone echoed by Suzanne Wang’s minimalist setting, Sean Farrell’s lighting plot and, perhaps especially, Zachary Williamson’s all-important sound design.

The particular form of insanity that devours and will eventually destroy the inherently innocent Tom McGill is religious obsession, and it is much to dramatist Walsh’s credit that he makes his points with emphatic clarity without ever surrendering to the cliches that ordinarily infest this sort of thing.

“Misterman” is over, or so it seems, before it reaches its potential full speed. The journey is short, but it’s well worth taking.