"A faithful, if soporific adaptation...O'Byrne's adaptation and production (he also directs) eschews that dramatic potential for something a lot closer to a staged reading...Unfortunately, there is so little variation between the different characters that we feel like we're watching one long story time with granddad...Certainly many audience members will find the proceedings more thrilling, but it is hard to argue that a show with so little dynamic variance needs to be as long as it is."
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"A travelogue with a fancy literary pedigree...Elegantly written, it's a tall order for adaptation to the stage...For all their effort, however, the result is pretty static...‘The Aran Islands’ is filled with tales but they don't compensate for the lack of an overall dramatic thrust. It might help if Conroy took a more dynamic approach to the text, but in general his intonation is slow and heavy, determined to treat each word as priceless. The result is lulling rather the captivating."
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"Conroy, a chameleon-like actor, is a mostly riveting presence...A criticism of O'Byrne's adaptation of 'The Aran Islands,' a unique hybrid of memoir and documentary, to a stage monologue would be that it gives the same weight to Synge and the storytellers as it does to their folktales...It's easy to see why directors and actors would be eager to unearth more of Synge's writing but O'Byrne's adaptation only really takes flight when Conroy is giving voice to its humorous and haunting tales."
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“The demands placed on its star Brendan Conroy are of Wagnerian scale…While Brendan Conroy does an admirable job playing the many characters and Joe O’Byrne’s crisp direction keeps the proceedings moving, after about an hour a sense of sameness sets in. I would like to see Synge’s splendid study, which takes Aran Islanders from homemade cradle to coffin, performed by a large cast in which each storyteller tells his/her own tale.”
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"This adaptation stars the master storyteller Brendan Conroy and provides one-hundred minutes of scintillating – often brilliantly bizarre – tales Synge shared...With irrepressible energy and indomitable enthusiasm, Conroy takes the audience on Synge’s island adventures delivering each story, canvassing every rock and every resident with exacting care...Gives palpable truth to every word of wisdom and wit teeming from the 'lonely rocks' Synge visited."
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“Conroy’s delivery is as consistently stormy as the inclement weather on which he frequently reports. He’s like a theatrical camp counselor presiding over a campfire. There’s good reason for that. O’Byrne is telling the story of a man who told stories that call on yet another storyteller...His underlying message is that stories are forever. The strength of 'The Aran Islands' is that there’s no denying the point.”
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“Brendan Conroy has the ability to hold an audience spellbound…Through it all, Conroy modulates his voice to express reactions, and he also strides or strolls about the stage under O’Byrne’s direction to provide much-needed movement to keep the performance from becoming static. It is mainly the actor’s gift for mellifluously immersing himself in Synge’s portrait of the islands and their people that commands attention and does justice to the play.”
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"Synge’s travelogue-like text hasn’t been adapted into a full-blown drama so much as whittled back into a hundred-minute piece of narrative...Fisherman’s nets and tackle comprise the duskily illuminated setting for Conroy’s performance, which, ultimately, is not entirely compelling. His eyes occasionally blaze with conviction as he flings his arms out to emphasize these tales, yet the actor’s vocal range is not especially varied, and the monologue turns a mite tedious before he concludes it."
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