NANCY REILLY
It’s impossible to say that she stopped the show because in fact she didn’t bat an eye, staying in her character as a tough-talking barmaid in a losers’ bar. “Want a seat?” she asked the startled woman who’d emerged at the bottom of the steps, late for the show. The woman, unsure, stared at her. “Come on,” Reilly said, her gestures and voice so consistent and sure that, scripted or not, this event became part and parcel of Reilly’s story about a suffocating little bar where chaos is constant and despair is the norm.
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Reilly plays all this like a magician. Slipping in and out of character at a moment’s notice, she works her bar with familiarity and contempt, tossing off one-liners, flirting, drinking. Keeping her voice nearly at a monotone, Reilly punctuates her tale with perfect timing, astounding concentration, and a perversely ingenious use of small props as exclamation points: she drops beer bottles and coins and spills liquor–never dramatically but always magnificently–to underscore her characters’ desperation. What at first appear to be random accidents turn into a ritual of small explosions. And the text–thick, bleak, and stripped of the slightest sentimentality–is a wonder.
