“The Night Alive” at the Varsity
Date/Time
Date(s) - 05/06/2022 - 05/07/2022
7:00 pm
Location
Varsity Center
Categories
7 p.m. Friday and Saturday, May 6 and 7
2 p.m. Sunday, May 8
$12 / $6 students with ID
Doors and Varsity Bar one hour prior to shows
Note: Not suitable for young children
See playwright Conor McPherson talk about “The Night Alive” at
https://youtu.be/tFWzedKse2k.
CARBONDALE – The Varsity is producing a second play by award-winning Irish playwright Conor
McPherson. The theatrical production of “The Night Alive” will be presented the first weekend
in May at the downtown venue. McPherson wrote the Varsity’s popular production of “The
Weir,” which was presented last fall.
“The Night Alive” premiered in London in June 2013, then moved to Broadway and other
venues across the United States, including Chicago and Los Angeles.
Kevin Purcell of Cobden is again directing. Actors in the production are some of the best in the
region, and each has appeared in numerous productions in Carbondale and beyond. They are
Kim Curlee, Sarah Dubach, Eric Billingsley, Dan Hill and Todd Brown.
The play is set in the drawing room of an Edwardian house in Dublin, which is now a rooming
house inhabited by 50-something Tommy, who rents a room from his Uncle Maurice, who lives
upstairs. Tommy's friend, Doc, also sleeps in the room and helps Tommy doing odd jobs and
moving things around with Tommy's van. None of these men is in any kind of relationship, and
they all scrape by from day to day amid the junk-filled squalor of the house.
One night, Tommy rescues a young woman, Aimee, from a beating on the street. He brings her
home to get her cleaned up, and she ends up staying. A tentative friendship develops over the
following weeks between Tommy and Aimee and between Aimee and the other men in the
house. Trouble crashes into their lives when Aimee's ex-boyfriend, Kenneth, comes looking for
her.