Citadel's charming 'Outside Mullingar' celebrates middle-age romance

“Outside Mullingar” - ★ ★ ★

Anthony and Rosemary, the middle-aged neighbors around which John Patrick Shanley's gentle comedy “Outside Mullingar” centers, are a likable pair.

Except they're not - a pair, that is.

They live in the homes where they grew up, on adjacent farms in a rural, rain-soaked burg a couple of hours west of Dublin, Ireland. Each cares for a tolerably peevish widowed parent. Both parents think their respective children are daft.

Anthony's a bit odd. Rosemary's a bit ornery. Having orbited around each other for years, they're mostly cordial to each other and occasionally irritated. All of which makes them potentially perfect partners, according to the rules of romantic comedy - rules by which the Pulitzer Prize-winning Shanley studiously abides in this comedy, whose warmhearted Citadel Theatre revival makes for a pleasant diversion on a winter night.

By those same rules, the outcome of “Outside Mullingar” is never in doubt. Still, in this tale of loneliness and love, of missed opportunities and second chances, the course of true love isn't bathed in sunshine. In fact, it rains for the better part of the play, which mostly unfolds in the unkempt kitchen in the home septuagenarian Tony Reilly (Jack Hickey) shares with his 42-year-old son Anthony (Ross Frawley).

We meet them as they return from the funeral of their neighbor Christopher Muldoon, with whom Tony has a long-standing quarrel over a piece of land that for 30 years has impeded the Reilly's access to the road. Shortly after the men arrive home, they're joined by Muldoon's widow, Aoife (Susan Hofflander), and their daughter Rosemary (Laura Leonardo Ownby), who spends the play's opening moments smoking outside.

Over tea and biscuits, Tony reveals he intends to sell the farm to a nephew in America because he's convinced Anthony - despite having maintained it single-handedly for years - doesn't love the land and “takes no joy in it.”

“Some of us don't have joy,” Anthony counters. “But we do what we must. Is a man who does what he must, though he feels no pleasure, less of a man than one who's happy?”

It falls to Rosemary, whose relationship with Anthony is fraught, to secure his inheritance, which she does by refusing to relinquish the disputed parcel that her late father left to her.

The combination of droll fatalism (death is a frequent topic) and lyricism (Shanley's witty dialogue has a rustic charm) makes for some laugh-out-loud moments in director Beth Wolf's affectionate, but not overly sentimental, production, which benefits from Hofflander and Hickey's strong supporting performances. Eric Luchen also deserves credit for his homey, utilitarian set.

But the success of “Outside Mullingar” depends upon the relationship between the disarming Frawley's awkward, perpetually wary Anthony and Ownby's resolute Rosemary, whose bossy ways have a peculiar charm. And while Shanley's explanation for his reticence and her insistence strains credulity, it doesn't change the fact that we want to see these two together, right where they belong, in the middle.

“The middle is the best part,” explains Aoife, Irish seer that she is. “The middle of anything is the heart of the thing.”

So it is.

Location: Citadel Theatre, Lake Forest High School West Campus, 300 S. Waukegan Road, Lake Forest, (847) 735-8554, citadel theatre.org

Showtimes: 7:30 p.m. Thursday; 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday; 3 p.m. Sunday through March 13, as well as 1 p.m. March 2

Tickets: $40, $45

Running time: About 90 minutes, no intermission

Parking: In the lot

Rating: For teens and older

COVID-19 precautions: Proof of vaccination or negative COVID test and masking required