By Robert Nesti

After completing "Ragtime," playwright Terrence McNally turned to his collaborators, composer Stephen Flaherty and lyricist Lynn Ahrens, and asked them what they wanted to do next.

"And I told him I wanted to do something a lot more intimate, more chamber-sized: an anti-'Ragtime," Flaherty explained recently. "I also told him for years I'd wanted to do an Irish piece. My family would always joke with me and ask when I was going to write my Irish show."

As it would happen, McNally had an Irish show in mind-an adaptation of a film he had just seen called "A Man of No Importance," which had appeared briefly in theaters a few years earlier.

Boston audiences will have their opportunity to see what the team came up with when their musicalized "A Man of No Importance" has its first production outside of New York in a production by the SpeakEasy Stage Company starting Oct. 3 at the Boston Center for the Arts.

Set in 1964, the film, directed by Suri Krishnamma, starred Albert Finney as a middle-aged Dublin bus driver who stages productions of Oscar Wilde plays in the basement of his local parish, St. Imelda's. For him Wilde is something of a demi-god, and he shares his admiration for him with anyone within hearing distance, reciting his poems to passengers on his bus route. He also, like Wilde, fancies young men; but, unlike Wilde, is too repressed to act on his urges. Still he convinces a straight colleague he has a crush on, named Robbie, to take a role in a production of "Salome" he plans to mount with his St. Imelda's Players.

"I was one of the few people who had seen it on its initial run," Flaherty recalled, "and remembered it as being very small and realistic. I couldn't see how the music would play a part of it."

Nor could Ahrens, his collaborator for 20 years with such musicals as "Once on This Island," "My Favorite Year," "Seussical," and the score to the Disney film "Anastasia." The pair, along with McNally, won Tony Awards for their score to "Ragtime."

"It took us a little while to figure out how to heighten it enough to be a musical. But I think we did that. There's a device in the show that involves memory, and a man's remembering of things that happened to him in his life re-enacted by members of his theatrical troupe. So it's very theatrical, and very heightened; but this was something we imposed on the movie."

A different challenge

The experience, though different from "Ragtime," proved equally satisfying for the trio.

"It was relief. It was lovely," said Ahrens. "'Ragtime' was a huge undertaking, basically a show written from scratch, involving three major story lines and subplots. It was a huge, huge undertaking to write that show. This was in some ways a very different challenge, and a difficult show to write; but when all is said and done, writing on a smaller scale for a smaller cast was very lovely, and enabled us to delve very deeply into the very hearts and souls of these people in the show."

And with a cast headed by Tony winners Roger Rees and Faith Prince, "A Man of No Importance" opened a year ago at Lincoln Center Theater with hopes for a move over to Broadway.

"We thought it was just going to be embraced by the critics," said McNally. "We did three weeks of great previews, and were bewildered by the critics' indifference to it. The audiences loved it, and every preview went so well. There was talk of moving it right to Broadway, but when the Times doesn't like you, it all collapses in one minute. That is the nature of the game of theater."

"That's the state of the art in New York City," said Ahrens. "It would be nice if the power was spread around a little bit more."

"On the opening night there were five different producers who were doing cartwheels because everyone loved it," added Flaherty. "It was one of those shows that got an astounding audience reaction. Even from the first preview, when there were pieces that weren't quite right, we got an astounding audience reaction. And the people at Lincoln Center Theater said they never had seen that type of reaction to a show in the smaller theater. But obviously it didn't move, so that's the end of that story."

A killer review

For some it was because of the review in the New York Times by Ben Brantley, which was decidedly luke-warm.

"Some reviews were fantastic; but some people didn't get it. And I don't want to comment on any individual paper," Flaherty continued.

"But I think that this show is a very, very special show and in a certain way it confused certain critics because they were trying to review it in a standard way using their standard criteria of what is a musical. But this is much more a piece of Irish storytelling that involves music as an element; it is really its own thing; and some people couldn't respond to it. It was much too special and innovative. It has a humble, rough-hewn quality that made it seem almost improvised."

"It's not a traditional musical at all; in a certain way it's more in the Irish-storytelling tradition than it is the musical tradition. A lot of it is about interior life, so it's not a series of big, brassy numbers. In fact, it is much quieter and more introspective. It's more similar to 'The Weir' than 'Hello, Dolly!'"

"There's nothing not to love about this show," said Ahrens, "and I think that the Boston audience will embrace it. It's very moving, it's very universal, and it's also very specific and interesting. It's a quiet piece; and in a world of big, loud, brassy, screaming musicals, this is a quiet character piece that's very funny and tender, and, ultimately, very moving."