Poetic Irish Domestic Drama at Gift Theatre

Marina Carr’s 2007 drama Marble, now having its Chicago premiere at The Gift Theatre in the delightful Copernicus Center, is a kind of updated Pinter meets the Existentialists meets Irish magical realism. An intense examination of marriage, and the fundamental nature of  midlife crisis, of what being a mother or a woman or a man or a provider is, all delivered with that wordy prose poetry so characteristic of Irish storytelling.  Kay Martinovich directs a powerful cast that exhumes the epic drama of being and staying married and the emotions that erupt in betrayal.  

Art (amicable Paul Daddario) meets up with his best mate Ben (a tightly wound John Gawlik) for a cigar and a brandy and Art admits he had a dream that he slept with Ben’s wife Catherine.  Turns out Catherine (a passionate Brittany Burch) has been dreaming the same thing.   We meet Anne (comically depressed Cyd Blakewell) who keeps Art’s world running, laundry clean, kids raised.  She lives on coffee and wine.  All of them are at the point in life where one asks: Is this all there is?  Art and Catherine keep dreaming of each other and it gets very uncomfortable, for them and for us, so close we can touch them, so close we could serve ourselves drinks off their bar. Catherine wants the dream to become her reality and she is willing to blow everything up to get it.  But once the dream crosses into reality its a completely different thing: It’s fraught and tragic and even though they never appear, I keep thinking about the kids whose lives are going to be destroyed by these grown ups.  

Nothing is solved in this play, but it will hit parts of you where the soliloquies sound like your own mind talking. We all walk towards death. We all need to eat.   Though my thoughts won’t be in an Irish accent (which slips in and out for various characters). Profoundly this play wants to know: Where is the line in betrayal? When you are dreaming about being with someone else or when you act while waking to make it real?

And then it asks: What would you sacrifice to feel alive in the second half of your existence? And what are you going to do before you end up under a slab of marble.  Each of the characters, while still young, is grappling with the undeniability of mortality and the mind numbing repetitiveness and triviality of daily living.  It takes the full two hours to find out there is no way out. 

Marble is not a comfortable play but it's got a kind of heroic beauty: the heroism of showing up and loading the dishwasher. The dubious heroism of being a wrecking ball to get out of banality. 

Marble is playing Thursdays through Sundays through August 30th at The Gift Theatre at the Kings Hall in the Copernicus Center, 5216 West Lawrence Avenue in Chicago. For tickets and information go to https://thegifttheatre.org/event/marble-a-chicago-premiere-by-marina-carr-2/2026-08-06/

Photo by Joe Mazza

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