Playwright John Patrick Shanley has rarely been as quirkily charming as he is in his tangy Irish comedy Outside Mullingar, now in the final weekend of a scrumdiddlyumptious The 6th Act revival at the Matrix.

The Mullingar in question is the Irish Midlands town that clans like the Reillys and the Muldoons have called home for centuries, and with family members ever at odds with each other, today is no different than any that have come before.

Cantankerous septuagenarian Tony Reilly (Armin Shimerman), for example, has never been all that fond of his 42-year-old son Anthony (Michael Kirby) despite the lad’s hard work and dedication, sensing in his still unmarried son an insufficient love of the land, a failing that has prompted the older man to consider selling the family farm to an American nephew eager to return to mother Ireland and find himself a bride.

Complicating matters is the fact that Tony long ago sold a tiny strip of land separating his property from the main road to frenemy neighbor John Mulligan, who quickly made sure that Tony would need to open not just one but two gates in order to access his own property, and Tony’s American nephew won’t purchase the Reilly family farm until his uncle buys back the 40-meter strip from John’s just-widowed wife Aoife’s (Kitty Swink) 30something daughter Rosemary (Liza Seneca).

Unfortunately, and for reasons known only to her, Rosemary absolutely refuses to part with the land, nor will she give up her long simmering grudge against Anthony, who at the ripe old age of 13, made the questionable decision to push Rosemary and make her cry.

Outside Mullingar may get off to a talky start, but those willing to take an Irish leap of faith will be richly rewarded for their patience, for just as Shanley’s Loretta Castorini and Ronnie Cammareri somehow managed to overcome their mutual enmity and end up Moonstruck by love in the 1989 Cher/Nicolas Cage box-office smash, only the most hardened cynic could fail to see that Anthony Reilly and Rosemary Muldoon are as made for each other as their Sicilian-American film counterparts.

Outside Mullingar hearkens back to the Doubt playwright’s early years as a writer when theater fare like Italian American Reconciliation and Savage In Limbo combined humor and heart in ethnically specific environments, though this time round it’s the Irish who get the patented Shanley treatment.

As he did in February’s The Brothers Abelson Since 1942, director Matthew Leavitt elicits one colorful, carefully modulated performance after another from a couldn’t-be-better cast.

An absolutely terrific Kirby gives Anthony plenty of odd but endearing charm, the luminous Seneca gradually reveals longings kept carefully hidden beneath Rosemary’s armor-plated exterior, and the will-they-or-won’t-they chemistry between the seemingly mismatched pair is particularly palpable when Shanley turns Outside Mullingar into a romantic, comedic two-hander in the play’s final third.

Shimerman is crusty, irascible perfection as Tony opposite Swink’s wonderfully wry Aoife, and it’s an honest-to-goodness treat seeing the real-life spouses exchange back-and-forth banter the way only folks who’ve known each other for decades can do.

A less inspired scenic designer than Mark Mendelson might simply have split the Matrix Theatre’s widescreen stage into quarters, one for each of Outside Mulligar’s four distinct locales, but Mendelson ingeniously manages to have three out of four of them occupy pretty much the entire playing area.

W. Alejandro Melendez’s lighting, Caitlin Ciser’s costumes, Christopher Moscatiello’s sound design, and Megan Trapani’s properties and set dressing complete as topnotch a production design as I’ve seen at the Matrix.

Last but not least, dialect coach Keri Safran has four talented American actors convincing us that they’re as Irish as Brendan Gleeson, Sharon Horgan, Colin Ferrell, and Saoirse Ronan.

Grant Gerrard is technical director. Rich Wong is stage manager.

I fell in love with Outside Mullingar when it played the Geffen in 2015, and it’s perhaps even more effective ten years later at the Matrix, where up-close-and-personal works very much to its advantage.

It may have taken me until the tail end of Outside Mullingar’s three-week run to make it to this latest The 6th Act gem, but faith and begorrah I’m over the Irish moon that I did.

Matrix Theatre, 7657 Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles.
www.the6thact.com

–Steven Stanley
June 21, 2025
Photos: Karianne Flaathen

Visit www.theatreinla.com/nowplayingrs.php for a review roundup of what’s now playing in theaters around Los Angeles.

Tags: John Patrick Shanley, Los Angeles Theater Review, Matrix Theatre, The 6th Act