Shining City
By Conor McPherson
Directed by Katherine Owens
A chilling urban ghost story

Sept. 22-Oct 20, 2007
Previews Sept. 19, 20, 21
Press night Sept. 22
5 weeks
1 hour and 15 minutes
** Regional Premiere

Press Release

Glen Arbery of Park Cities People says:

"It’s a long way from Shakespearean blank verse, but in Conor McPherson’s Shining City at Undermain... language itself becomes the primary focus.

It’s too bad this excellent play has only this weekend left in its run. If you have one play to see this month, make it this one.

Conor McPherson’s dialogue in Shining City makes David Mamet’s look a little formal by contrast. Set in the office of a former priest, now a therapist, the play is about two actions crossing each other — the struggle of a man grieving over his dead wife and his own sins, and the former priest’s continuing crisis of faith. This production is close to perfect, by far the best thing I’ve seen at Undermain since Caryl Churchill’s A Number several years ago, and easily the best drama in Dallas this year.

The Undermain’s space, always a little hard on people with claustrophobia, works beautifully for a set in which the therapist’s couch and chair facing the audience downstage create an immediate intimacy.

Bruce DuBose and Anthony Ramirez star in Conor McPherson’s Shining City at the Undermain.But it’s McPherson’s language that’s stunning. Sometimes a character goes through five or six seconds and 10 different starts just trying to find the right way to get a sentence out, but it never seems like a contrivance, and the actors under Katherine Owens’ direction are pitch perfect. In fact, Bruce DuBose as John, the man grieving for his dead wife, has a long monologue in the third scene that has you, on the one hand, completely lost in what he says, and on the other hand, marveling at the easy naturalness with which he gives this extremely difficult dialogue life. DuBose hits every emotion perfectly. If there’s better acting than this in Dallas, I haven’t seen it.

Anthony Ramirez as the priest-therapist (still a confessor, but without the power to absolve) has much less to say, but he gives his character a slightly creepy borderline identity. This is a man unsure of his own standing in sexuality (there’s one gay scene), spiritually hungry, full of guilt, cruel without meaning to be.

Shannon Kearns-Simmons as his fiancée, the mother of his child who supported him through his education as a therapist after he left the priesthood, has a pure believability. "