Stage plight

Thirty-five thousand attended shows last year at 132 West 22nd St., which amounts to a healthy 80 percent capacity.
Last Friday, ahead of several booked-up days for its current production, “After the Ball,” the Virginia, Co. Cavan, native O’Reilly was at work upstairs in his office.
“I love the stage. I don’t particularly like being behind a desk, and there’s a lot that’s involved with that,” he said.
But it’s a price he’s been willing to pay “to make it happen” — and it has happened, time and again.
The Irish Rep, which O’Reilly founded with artistic director Charlotte Moore, is now in its 17th season and will mark a decade in its Chelsea home this year.
“We used to be a nomadic tribe,” O’Reilly said. “Every show was in a new theater. It was tough going.”
Right now, the high-profile Irish institution — one that has entered the mainstream of the cultural life of the city — is approaching a crossroads.
Its lease will be up at the end of 2006, so it must raise the money to buy the building or find a new venue. Its founders are inclined toward staying in the space they converted from a chemical warehouse into offices and two theaters.
The owner has offered to sell it to the company for $4 million. Though he and his colleagues are faced with a daunting fund-raising task, O’Reilly is “quietly optimistic that it’ll happen — that we can make it into a permanent institution.”
Already, the Irish Repertory Theater is the longest-lasting professional Irish theatrical venture in the history of the United States. Its roots are in the collaborative friendship of actors Moore and O’Reilly, who met doing a Hugh Leonard play.
“We just got on,” he said. It was a few years, though, before they came up with the plan that became the Irish Rep.
“We decided to put on a play, that was it,” he recalled. “And we just kept on doing plays.”
Soon enough, they could see a void was being filled.
O’Reilly gives Moore most of the credit for the Irish Rep’s success.
“She motivates people on the stage to light up. It’s a great gift,” he said.
Their idea was to have a floating company of actors that they would use all the time. And, indeed, a few actors who starred in the very first shows still work for the company, although only the half-dozen office staff is on salary.
O’Reilly, who was 18 when he left Ireland in 1978, said they wanted to perform plays with a “native understanding.” For instance, an Irish role ought to be played by someone with an Irish accent. And in fact, about 40 Irish-born New York-resident Equity members have performed in Irish Rep productions in recent years.
The Irish Rep’s goal is a little different from that of the Abbey Theatre, where O’Reilly worked for a year when he returned to Ireland in 1979. Its mission statement requires it put on work that’s of some relevance to Ireland or to Irish America, whereas the famous Dublin theater is less restricted in that way.
But because of Ireland’s unique contribution to English-speaking drama, O’Reilly stressed that the Irish Rep should not be labeled an ethnic theater company. Rather, its peers are other off-Broadway outfits like the Atlantic Theater Company and the Manhattan Theater Club. And in terms of output and profile, it matches many companies that have bigger budgets.
The Irish Rep may have stretched its own rule somewhat with last season’s “Let’s Put on a Show!” starring Jan and Mickey Rooney, O’Reilly said — the main Irish link being Joe Yule Jr.’s stage name. But Rooney’s a movie legend, he added, and the space was available for a limited time, so they opted to do the production.
O’Reilly is particularly proud of the more difficult material the company has taken on, such as Tom Murphy’s “Ballengangaire” and “Bedbound” by Enda Walsh, both productions in the 2002-03 season. Br