Trilogy Of Mikel Murfi Solo Theater Works Comes to Irish Arts Center

Irish Arts Center presents Mikel Murfi's trilogy The Man in the Woman's Shoes, I Hear You and Rejoice, and the North American premiere of the intimate, searching, and painfully funny final installment The Mysterious Case of Kitsy Rainey. The performances of these three virtuosic solo works set in Murfi's beloved County Sligo will be presented in repertory, October 24–November 18. Though the trilogy taken as a whole reveals a bittersweet arc and creates a neighborly familiarity with its community of characters, all three performances can be experienced as vital standalone works.

 

The Man in the Woman's Shoes and I Hear You and Rejoice—the first two works in his trilogy bringing to vivid life a small-town cobbler and the coterie of full-hearted, warm, and infinitely gossipy characters he encounters—both made their acclaimed, New York Times Critic's Pick U.S. premieres at Irish Arts Center. The newspaper praised the “inexhaustibly multifarious writer, director and sole performer” for “body language as precise, condensed and evocative as Morse code,” in his works “in which an entire town is summoned into being.” This season, Murfi returns to present both plays alongside the The Mysterious Case of Kitsy Rainey, for the first time populating Irish Arts Center's flexible new theater with the trilogy's throng of animated personalities.

 

In Murfi's The Man in the Woman's Shoes (IAC, 2015), non-verbal cobbler protagonist Pat Farnon takes a five-mile walk through town in a pair of women's flats, wearing them in for a customer, on whom he has an overwhelming crush—the vociferous football coach Kitsy Rainey. I Hear You and Rejoice (IAC, 2018) is set some years down the line—years that have seen Farnon through both unexpected bliss and tragedy. Equipped onstage with nothing but a chair and his seemingly infinite physical and vocal abilities, Murfi draws a heartwarming and often hilarious portrait of the intimacy of a community. While featuring many of the characters audiences know and love, The Mysterious Case of Kitsy Rainey focuses on an encounter between Pat Farnon and a new character whose antics and insights reveal the many ways life can surprise us, and we can surprise ourselves.

 

Says Murfi, “I've spent ten years with Pat Farnon. It's the most beautiful experience as an actor, because the character becomes like family: it does my heart good to be with him. He's the most lovely man.”

 

Trained at École Jacques Lecoq, Paris, Mikel Murfi is a performer, director, and writer celebrated for his “vocal dexterity,” “physical nimbleness” (TimeOut) and all-around “astonishing acting” (The New York Times). He is cherished in Ireland for these poignant multi-character solo plays, for his collaborations with Enda Walsh, for his acting roles at The Abbey Theatre, and more. Between presentations of Walsh's plays (Ballyturk and The Last Hotel, in which Murfi performed, and Misterman, for which he served as Movement Director) at St. Ann's Warehouse and Irish Arts Center's showcasing of Murfi's solo performances, Murfi has likewise been welcomed to wide acclaim in New York.

 

Murfi's trilogy of solo works were created by way of commissions from Hawk's Well Theatre and Sligo County Council Arts Service for the Bealtaine Festival, which empowers older people to connect with the arts. Murfi immersed himself in the world of elderly community members in Sligo, interviewing them on their experiences of life in the town. Though Murfi may stand solo on the stage in these performances, they are suffused with the contributions of numerous people who imparted their memories to be reflected in theatre. Paralleling IAC's own mission, these works were founded on the idea of gathering and giving voice to a community—and they have continued to do so wherever they travel.

 

While Murfi's trilogy reflects a nuanced and intricate understanding of life in Sligo, that specificity also becomes a gateway to the universal—as the artist explores love, loss, and death amidst this community of characters who bring endless humor to the heartache of being human.

 

Murfi says, “I'm a sentimentalist, so I don't fit with all the great theatermakers and critics who think something has to be a visceral, terrible work where someone has their head chopped off for there to be any kind of drama. People have very simple dramas day to day, and I wanted to reflect that back to the lovely, gorgeous people who I've met in Sligo. I wanted these works to be gentle: to give us ways to talk through the things that are important to us—even grieving and mortality—without too much provocation or trauma.”

 

The trilogy of Murfi works demonstrates the range of Irish Arts Center's programming and the flexibility of its new building. It follows the institution's immensely acclaimed recent American Premiere of the Lyric Theatre, Belfast's large-scale punk-rock musical Good Vibrations, reconfiguring the theater to provide an intimate experience of one of Ireland's finest storytellers and most virtuosic actors. The presentation continues a close, longtime collaboration between Murfi in IAC. In April 2023, IAC hosted “Masterclass: The Architecture and Playability of Theatre with Mikel Murfi,” a lecture/demonstration in which Murfi talked about his work and influences, with particular reference to his collaborations with Enda Walsh, Cillian Murphy, and Sabine Dargent.

 

Schedule & Descriptions

 

All shows will be performed on the same day on October 28 and November 11 & 18.

 

The Mysterious Case of Kitsy Rainey

October 24, 25 and November 1, 15 at 7:30pm

October 26, 27, & 28 and November 4, 10, 11, & 18 at 8pm

November 5 & 12 at 2pm

 

Critics are welcome to the following press performances for an official opening on Monday, October 30, at 7:30pm:

Wednesday, October 25, at 7:30pm
Thursday, October 26, at 8pm
Friday, October 27, at 8:00pm
Saturday, October 28, at 8:00pm

Having married in his later years, Pat finally decides to “lift the lid” on the life lived by his Kitsy prior to their union, all while facing down his own reckoning. Tender, heartfelt, and joyously funny, The Mysterious Case of Kitsy Rainey completes Pat Farnon's journey in a most unexpected way.

 

The Man in the Woman's Shoes

 

November 8 at 7:30pm

November 2, 16 at 8pm

October 28 and November 11, 18 at 1pm

November 4 at 2pm

Just outside of town, cobbler Pat Farnon lives on his own, contentedly aging in the cottage in which he was reared. Join him as he walks the five miles into his “metropolis,” populated with no-necked water diviners, sporting savants, loudmouths, and preachers.

I Hear You and Rejoice

November 3, 9, 17 at 8pm

October 28 and November 11, 18 at 4:30pm

“Once in a lifetime, a woman the likes of Kitsy comes along and when she does, the universe has to expand to accommodate her.” From the football field to the chapel floor, Kitsy always has the final word. By turns moving and hilarious, her friends and neighbors celebrate the impact Kitsy has made on her community

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