" 'I Hear You and Rejoice' is deeply moving and frequently hilarious, a profound portrait of a marriage, and an accomplished work from an artist who is carving out of his native County Sligo, a terrain as unforgettable as Brian Friel's fictional Ballybeg."
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"Accomplished entertainer though he is, Tony Cleary doesn’t have a thing on his creator...This virtuoso is strictly small-time compared to Mikel Murfi, the inexhaustibly multifarious writer, director and sole performer...It’s ultimately impossible to resist the gale theatrical force as Mr. Murfi presents his heroine through a multi-angled prism, with body language as precise, condensed and evocative as Morse code."
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“Murfi is amazing...Murfi employs his vocal and physical prowess to conjure up an entire community on the stage that is bare...An exquisite theatrical experience of the purest form...Murfi is breathtaking as he clowns, mimes and barrels all over the space while distinctively rendering each character...He creates a work that combines humor and pathos with a characteristic Irish dark sensibility...Murfi’s simple staging craftily serves the material...The production has momentum and visual depth.”
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"I have to confess that for much of the 75 minutes, I felt I was trying to get a handle on a runaway chicken of a yarn, flapping this way and that. Those who’ve suffered grief and loss may be able to catch, if they’re quick-eared, nicely turned phrases of touching consolation...Miserable sinner that I am, I found much of it deathly, and rejoiced not a lot."
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"By turns heart-warming and heart breaking, Mikel Murfi’s 'I Hear You and Rejoice' is a gentle, elegiac multi-character monologue about grief and love in later life...The world Murfi conjures is luminously clear, if somewhat narrow in scope. Given Murfi’s sweet-tooth for sentimentality, it is unsurprising that the piece sometimes wobbles towards the mawkish. However, a backbone of truthfulness, humour, and tremendous warmth supports the show."
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"Mikel Murfi contains multitudes – still. The Irish actor can fill a one-man show with people: men, women, children. He brings whole villages to life...Murfi is legion and it is quite a thing to watch...This is a show that abounds with love – so much that, in many ways, it struggles to find the words for it...But it works less through words than through feeling. Through Pat, you feel like you've known Kitsy Rainey all your life."
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"The Irishman delivers his words with a rhythm and a lyricism best described as hypnotic...Amid the laughter is a powerful meditation on the significance of a life well-lived, told from the bottom of a broken heart...What may sound like hyperbole elsewhere sounds perfectly natural in Murfi’s hands. This is a masterclass in the art of the monologue. Funerals have rarely been so enjoyable."
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"Here it is, pure distilled 100 per cent proof theatrical magic, conjured up by one man on one chair on an otherwise bare stage. The boundless power of words and storytelling to conjure worlds to involve and enchant an audience has rarely been so clearly demonstrated...Murfi is quite simply mesmerising in his engrossing evocation of this gentle world of vividly realised characters, not least his indomitable, irascible and warmly appealing wife."
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