THE MOUNTAINS LOOK DIFFERENT BY MICHEÁL MAC LIAMMÓIR DIRECTED BY AIDAN REDMOND MAY 30 THROUGH JULY 14
The Mountains Look Different
by Micheál mac Liammóir Directed by Aidan Redmond
Theatre Row (410 W. 42nd Street)
Tickets on sale now! May 30 through July 14 Tue, Thu, Fri & Sat 7:30PM Wed, Sat & Sun 2:00PM Wed 7:30PM: 6/19 No performance: 6/21
Call the FPC Hotline at: 212-315-0231
EnrichMINT Events Director and Designers
Aidan Redmond and team Sat. June 1, after the matinee A peek into the design process with director Aidan Redmond and creative team. This panel discussion, moderated by Mint Artistic Director Jonathan Bank, will give you some insight into the collaborative process.
The Importance of Being Micheál
Maya Cantu Sat. June 8, after the matinee Mint Resident Dramaturg, Maya Cantu, will discuss our author’s remarkable life and six-decade long career in the theater. Additional EnrichMint events will be added as they are arranged. Check our website for dates and details.
The Mountains Look Different is the story of Bairbre’s return home to Ireland, after a dozen hard years in London working the streets. Three days ago she married Tom, who knows nothing of her past. Together, they hope to settle with Tom’s father on his farm, and live a simple life far from the temptations and torments of the sinful city. But soon they will learn that it’s not easy for anyone to escape their past, even among the rocks and ruins of the mountainside. The idea for the play struck mac Liammóir after working on Anna Christie (O’Neill’s 1922 Pulitzer winner, about a former prostitute who falls in love.) He wondered what happened to Anna after the fall of the curtain. Then one day he saw a young married woman in Connemara looking out of the window at a motorcar who said with the slight hint of a London accent in her voice, “They look different from what they did when I was little—the mountains, I mean.” The Mountains Look Different was first produced in Dublin in 1948. “It is a work within a stones throw of great tragedy,” Gabriel Fallow wrote in the Standard. “Has all the makings of strong drama here, and he lets us have it at full blast,” noted the Stage. “It is a powerful meaty play, the kind that has you coming up for air when the curtain goes down,” hailed the Evening Times. The Christian Science Monitor called Mountains “a courageous play in which there is no beating about the bush:” Mountains provoked heated controversy in conservative Dublin in 1948. The Irish Times reported that two men left their seats at intermission and asked the audience to join with them in leaving the theater: A third man rose from his seat in the gallery and said that he was in agreement with the protest. Shouts of: ‘Sit down’ and ‘If you don’t like it leave’ then came down from the audience. The man in the gallery was heard to say: ‘Are you Catholics?’ The ushers moved towards the men who were protesting; the orchestra began to play, and their voices were drowned. This Irish Independent, filled out the story with more detail: The play continued without interruption, but despite calls from the audience, Mr. mac Liammóir did not make a speech at the close, when he received an enthusiastic reception. Mr. mac Liammóir later told the Irish Independent that he believed the men who made the protest were sincere, but that it was a pity they had not waited to hear what the play had to say in the final act. The play had not been written from motives of sensationalism and was in no sense “shocking.” It was a drama of expiation and repentance…In a certain sense, it was in fact, a morality play.