Time Out NY Review of "A Man of No Importance"

By David Cote

"The love that dare not speak it's name. Do you know what that is?" The loaded question is posed by middle aged bus conductor Alfie Byrne (Rees) to young unwed mother-to-be Adele Rice (Murphy). Her uncomprehending response, and the crushed look on Alfies face, speak volumes about the world these teo inhabit: Dublin, 1964. Far from swinging England and a counter-cultural America, '60's Ireland is a hidebound and drably pious place where the euphemism for homosexuality is meaningless or worse, damnable. It is also the setting for A Man of No Importance, Lincoln Center's quaint and moving new musical, adapted from the 1994 movie of the same title starring Albert Finney.

Like its source, Man never accounts for the fact that, 64 years after Wilde's death, no one seems to know that he was a persecuted and prosecuted homosexual. Certainly the fact is ignored by Alfie, who lives and breathes Wilde, reciting his poetry to bus riders and directing his plays in a church bingo hall. Even as he moons over his handsome co-worker (Pasquale), Alfie passionately argues that Wilde "lived in the realm of the aesthetic. He never descended into the sewer." But the disparity between artistic purity and the aching lonliness of a closet case who lives with his sister (Prince) is sure to lead to Alfie's pathos-laced struggle out of the closet. His education in the ways of the world is hastened when the church censures his production of Salome as blasphemousand obscene, and he acts out Wilde's epigram: "The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it."

The inexhaustibly sympathetic Rees keeps the play on course in a role that could easily have tirned saccharine. With his trademark mercurial body language and features that fit between arrogance and wishfulness, the ever-youthful Rees conveys an adolescent heart trapped in a middle aged body. The ensemble, superbly directed by Joe Mantello, ably handles its colorful supporting roles. And Prince makes a surprising transformation from her usual comic persona to Alfie's bitterly unmarried sister, who resents taking care of her brother.

Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens's delightful score mixes Irish folk with a pinch of pop and show biz dazzle. Add Terrence McNally's book, which nicely fleshes out the supporting characters, and you have an unabashedly sentimental work of human drama that resonates with more force and yes, importance, than its humble scale would suggest.