I managed to fight gridlock last wednesday night to see this play—We’ll worth the effort—thought you folks might get a kick out of this.
TOP ON STAGE
Piping in the mood at O’Neill revival
Sunday, December 11, 2005 By ROBERT FELDBERG
As the Broadway revival of Eugene O’Neill’s play "A Touch of the Poet’’ begins, a lone man sits on the stage, playing an instrument you’ve probably never seen before, making a sound you’ve likely never heard, one that is hauntingly melancholy and sweet at the same time.The instrument is the uilleann (pronounced ill-un) pipes, an Irish bagpipe, and it establishes a mood of loss and longing before anyone has said a word.Director Doug Hughes said the pipe playing is in O’Neill’s text, and he decided to find an authentic musician."I saw a production years ago in which the actor didn’t play,‘’ he said. "Very often, actors will mime playing, and they use a [recorded] track. I wanted the real thing.‘‘It wasn’t easy to find a virtuoso - "we had people checking out conclaves of pipers up in the Hudson River Valley’’ - but Hughes finally discovered a transplanted Irishman named David Power, whom he calls ‘"the Zen Master of the pipes.’’ The director’s thirst for authenticity even led to the song that Power plays to open the drama, "The Bonny Bunch of Roses.‘’ "A Touch of the Poet,‘’ which opened Thursday night at the Roundabout Theatre Company’s Studio 54, is set in 1828 in a rundown tavern near Boston. The proprietor, and main character, is Cornelius Melody (Gabriel Byrne), an Irish immigrant who lives in his days of past glory, when he was a major in the British Army’s Seventh Dragoons, fighting Napoleon."The song is from the Napoleonic era,‘’ said Hughes, "and the bonny roses are England, Scotland and Ireland. The song refers to the fact that Napoleon went to Moscow and lost these prizes.‘’ To emphasize the memory aspect of the song, there are muted background sounds of men and horses engaged in a cavalry battle.Unlike Scottish bagpipes, the uilleann pipes do not involve blowing into the instrument. Instead, the musician squeezes a bellows with his arm to provide an air flow while playing the reed instrument with his fingers, producing a melodic line over a droning background."I find them more expressive than Scottish bagpipes,‘’ said Hughes. "They have more range, and you can play them more quietly. There’s more of a chamber music quality, a sense of a tale being told. Scottish pipes are a marching instrument. You can’t march with a uilleann; they have to be played seated.‘’ Although an ancient instrument, the pipes were rare even in Ireland for many years, one of the reasons apparently being a scarcity of pipe makers. Hughes traces the instrument’s revival to the 1960s and the Chieftains, the internationally successful instrumental group that helped stir new interest in traditional Irish music."I just think the uilleann pipes are deeply soulful,‘’ said Hughes. "Even in a jig, the music has a lamentable quality.‘’
And David Power plays the Uilleann pipes, which drone and trill with an ancient melody that, every so often, stirs the soul of the play.