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SHINING CITY **, The Biltmore Theatre, 461 W. 47th St.; (212) 239-6200.
THE Irish playwright Conor McPherson, whose "Shining City" opened at the Biltmore Theatre last night, is obsessed with ghosts. His first play to reach Broadway, "The Weir," was in effect a ghost story, and he's now following it with another spectral haunting.
It boasts a great cast led by a superb Brian F. O'Byrne - straight from his triumph last season in "Doubt" - and, making his Broadway debut, the wonderful Oliver Platt, to whom acting seems as natural as breathing.
McPherson is first and last a storyteller. He'd be a natural for radio, for his narrative method is to grab the audience by its ears and say, "Listen to this weird story. You don't have to believe it, but just suppose ..." And sometimes we do just that.
I recall his first creepy tale in New York, a monologue called "St. Nicholas," where a drama critic tells of his deepening involvement with vampires. Almost true to life, that one.
In "Shining City," we're offered snippets of stories that never quite hang together and never quite make sense. They're presumably meant to illuminate characters which, unfolding before us, provide a meaningful dramatic experience. They don't.
But they do talk, and quite interestingly, as we try to pick up the crumbs that might give us a better idea of what's really going on.
The play is set in a somewhat down-at-heel, sparsely furnished apartment in Dublin. Ian (O'Byrne), a seemingly diffident man in early middle age, is pottering around until his doorbell announces his visitor.
Enter John (Platt). After strained small talk, it becomes clear that Ian is some kind of lay therapist, and John a client referred to him.
John tells a strange tale. He can't sleep. His wife has recently been killed in a car crash, and - to cut a tall story down to size - he has just seen her mangled ghost. And he needs help that is something more than medical.
The intermissionless play is in five scenes, separated roughly two months apart, but although time is passing, there's no clear sense of when or how much is going on.
We do find out that Ian is a lapsed priest with a girlfriend, Neasa (Martha Plimpton), who has a baby of whom Ian is almost certainly the father.
Ian wants to break up with Neasa, and sends her back to his brother, where they were all staying. Two months later, feeling lonely, he nervously goes out to the park to pick up a sweet but low-rent rent boy (Peter Scanavino).
During their therapy sessions, John - who has had trouble with women and feels guilty about his wife's death - improves, until by the end he is in great shape. But although Ian has decided to pick up and settle with Neasa and child in Limerick, his troubles aren't over. Not yet.
So. The playwright's question, I presume, is, Do ghosts exist? And if they do, are they not evidence of some alternative plane of existence? Otherwise, it's just an unconvincing horror story.
But the acting - including a fierce but defeated Plimpton and a convincingly scuzzy but world-wise Scanavino - beautifully directed by Robert Falls, is absolutely lovely.
As to what it all meant - of that, I have no idea.
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