Review: A Masterful "Misterman" Revival Anchors the Origin Irish Theatre Festival

Misterman

Written by Enda Walsh

Directed by Labhaoise Magee

Presented by Origin Theatre Company at Theatre Row

410 W 42 St., Manhattan, NYC

June 23-July 5, 2026

With a new production of Enda Walsh's Misterman, the newly renamed 2026 Origin Irish Theatre Festival (formerly Origin 1st Irish), under the new leadership of Artistic Director Labhaoise Magee and Executive Director Aidan Cleary, Origin Theatre Company returns to the show with which it made its debut 24 years ago, a play whose protagonist restages his own past. Misterman is the centerpiece of Origin's 2026 festival, which runs from June 16th through July 5th and features a concert, staged readings, and a gala in addition to the full production of Misterman, all celebrating Walsh, a transformational voice in contemporary Irish drama. Misterman was first performed in 1999 in Cork, with the playwright also performing, and returned in a revised version (now starring Cillian Murphy) in 2011 at the Galway Arts Festival, between which Origin's 2002 New York City production marked the debut of Walsh's work in the United States. Now, revisiting those origins, the company's superb 2026 revival reveals a play that has lost none of its relevance, distinctiveness, or power in the intervening years.

Labhaoise Magee and Aidan Cleary

Thomas Magill (Daniel Marconi) is the play's central character and also the only one whom we see onstage. The others appear via either Thomas's mimicry or snippets of audio from conversations that he has recorded on tape–a habit of his, implies a late remark by a young woman, Edel, voiced by Mabel Byrne. The voiceover for Thomas's widowed mother is provided by Úna Clancy, and over the course of the play, Thomas takes cues from and responds to bits of these tapes in a way that suggests that he has memorized them, replaying a certain day in his life. Perhaps this is not the first time, or perhaps he has been preparing this reenactment for a while (it does seem to come, at points, complete with props), or perhaps, given that the moments in which we hear the recorded voices are the only times the audience's perspective is not completely aligned with Thomas's, maybe this rehearsal of events is all in his mind.

The first recorded voice we hear is actually not one from Thomas's town of Inishfree but that of Doris Day, whose song "Everybody Loves a Lover" will not stop (re)playing even when Thomas resorts to smashing the offending cassette player with a hammer–despite which the song still doesn't stop until it wants to. A humorous introduction to Thomas's strange existence, this almost vaudevillian opening scene in retrospect also gives us a clue to his psyche, how he might deal with a frustrated lack of control or power. Thomas, whom we see occupying a location (scenic design by Silin Chen) that resembles a storage space with a central platform on scaffolding and cluttered with audio equipment and other odds and ends, including a representation of his father's gravesite that includes crosses made of empty Fanta cans. Thomas and his mother lost the family shop after his father's death, and by the time of the day that Thomas reenacts, he was living with his ill, housebound mother and pursuing what he refers to as his "work." That work is to act as a kind of self-appointed missionary to his own town, to "change" Inishfree by using his "bright light of goodness to" make "the pure grow again"—in other words, generally, noting down what people are doing wrong (in his view) and telling them (off) about it.

Daniel Marconi

The God whom Thomas serves arguably substitutes for the father whom Thomas misses so much, a link bolstered by his father's suit (which Thomas is literally unable to fill) hanging up in rafters near the ceiling. As he encounters various people early in his reenacted day, he is called "Mister Traveller," "Mr Holy Man," and "Mister Weatherman," before being called "Misterman," all constructions that diminish the subject and the last of which positions him as a would-be man, a child who wants to become his absent daddy/deity. The way that more than one character remembers his father as a great, strong man associates him with "better days" gone by that are probably as illusory as Thomas's ideal, purified Inishfree. And given that it is not so easy to change a town full of humans to fit one's extremely narrow ideal, the channels into which Thomas directs his underlying sadness and anger may turn out not to be enough. Thomas's treatment of a local dog, for instance, points to some hypocrisy in this "angel of goodness," especially given that he characterizes Inishfree as "a town full of dogs." Shane Hennessy's lighting design and Elliot Yokum's sound design strikingly manifest some moments of particular disjunction between reality and Thomas's view of it, flashes of light and sound giving form to the breakdown. Byrne and Clancy's voiceovers provide occasions of important emotional grounding, but outside of these sequences, Misterman is a one-person show, and, as that person, Marconi is never less than compelling. He conjures up other townsfolk, from an elderly mother to an angry, drunken pub regular to an "angel" he meets in a cafe, as vividly as he does Thomas's tenderness and resentment, his piety and rage, his cloud-streaked fantasies and rather grubbier reality. With Marconi's terrific performance at its center, Misterman gets a new era for Origin off to an exemplary beginning.

-John R. Ziegler and Leah Richards