Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – The ambitious but murky musical adaptation of THE BUTCHER BOY dives headlong into the psyche of a disturbed youth

• By drediman
• August 17, 2022
• No Comments

This past weekend at the Irish Repertory Theatre in Chelsea, I attended the premiere of the Off-Broadway musical adaptation of Patrick McCabe’s dark 1992 novel The Butcher Boy. The new musical – which features music, lyrics, and book by up-and-coming writer Asher Muldoon (who is only a rising senior at Princeton University!) – dives headlong into the troubled psyche of Francie, an abused, mentally unstable lower-class Irish lad and his gradual progression to becoming a bonafide psychopath.

Conceptually, Mr. Muldoon is on to something really interesting in adapting The Butcher Boy for the musical stage. Francie’s need for fantasy as a means of escaping the harsh realities of his life fits well with musical theater’s ability to provide escapism for audiences and is certainly a good excuse for igniting the stage with a good old musical number (as exemplified by the Kander and Ebb classics Chicago and Kiss of the Spider Woman). Thematically, there are also strong shades of the film The Joker and Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd in terms of the correlation the work makes between socioeconomic conditions and mental health – in my mind, a subject well worth exploring. Although there’s much to appreciate about Mr. Muldoon’s ambitious undertaking – like his natural, sometimes stealthy knack for characterization, particularly of the anti-hero Francie – some of the storytelling is tonally murky and somewhat derivative of other works (I heard shades of The Great Comet, Dear Evan Hansen, A Man of No Importance, and other musicals sprinkled throughout the score).

The staging by Irish Rep’s Ciarán O’Reilly is fascinating in its visual suggestion of the role of 1960s media in Francie’s downward spiral, although it never truly explores this cause-and-effect implication. Throughout, the game cast does well to animate Mr. Muldoon’s vivid if uneven work. The clear standout is undoubtedly the talented young actor Nicholas Barasch in the central role Francie. His portrayal gives the character considerable charm and an angelic singing voice, which makes his sudden delusional pivots to perversely juvenile behavior and ultimately violence that much more unnerving and disturbing.

RECOMMENDED

THE BUTCHER BOY
Off-Broadway, Play
Irish Repertory Theatre
2 hours, 30 minutes (with one intermission)
Through September 11