Review: Word for Word stakes out a refreshing middle ground between stage and page | Datebook

Ryan Tasker, left, Ailbhe Doherty, Stephanie Hunt, Joel Mullennix and Monica Slater in Word for Word’s “Who’s-Dead McCarthy: Stories by Kevin Barry.”

Prose doesn’t move as theater does. It zooms out and in, stretching out, setting its own pace, not minding if you bookmark your page for a few moments to savor a felicitous phrase or make an unscheduled stop at sleepytime station.

But stage time cannot be so forgiving. To earn a whole crowd’s attention at once, and then hold it, it must ruthlessly self-justify. If it doesn’t have an answer to “What is happening and changing in real time, now?” it risks stasis. Cause-and-effect thus reign supreme; by and large, plots strive for the inexorable momentum of a semi on a downhill.

Word for Word, which transposes short stories to the stage without altering a single word of prose, stakes out a refreshing middle ground between the two forms. In “Who’s-Dead McCarthy: Stories by Kevin Barry,” which I saw Saturday, July 6, at Z Below, the pace can sometimes feel more loose and contemplative than theater typically allows. You sink into the Irish writer’s peppery observations across three short stories, directed by Paul Finocchiaro: A woman’s knees are “unfortunate protuberances.” A facial expression is a “weak-tea smile.” A village viewed from a train doesn’t merely pass by; instead, “the haggard verges of a town put in an appearance.”

Monica Slater, left, and Ryan Tasker in Word for Word’s “Who’s-Dead McCarthy: Stories by Kevin Barry.”

It’s theater that doesn’t bamboozle your attention via confetti cannons and kick lines but creeps into your mind, vine-like, and flowers. Veering and winding along Ireland’s shoreline, it rewards you with unpredictable endings, rather than laying out its whole plot in advance, like a Nebraska interstate, in deference to stage storytelling exigencies.

In the first piece, “The Coast of Leitrim,” for instance, you genuinely can’t tell if the self-sabotaging Seamus Ferris (Ryan Tasker) and his barista Katherine Zielinski (Monica Slater) are going to make it as a couple till the last lines. Likewise, in “The Wintersongs,” you might think you’ve pegged the Old Woman (Stephanie Hunt) who plops herself down on a train next to Sarah (Ailbhe Doherty) and won’t stop talking. But when she suddenly reveals she’s more than just some gabby kook, Barry and Finocchiaro vault the story into a different plane with its own rules, a U-turn that satisfies all the more for its surprise.

John Flanagan, left, and Joel Mullennix in Word for Word’s “Who’s-Dead McCarthy: Stories by Kevin Barry.”

As with any Word for Word show, phrases you’d assume would be deadly onstage — “he said,” say — are instead springboards for imagination. As the Old Woman, Hunt blurts out the “Trees!” she sees out the train window as if to say she’s keen enough to have suspected as much and that you have to keep an eye on those wily flora — a forest of meaning to express in a single word. As the title character in “Who’s-Dead McCarthy,” a wanderer who’s styled himself his town’s death announcer, John Flanagan barks out the name of a river as if it should be ashamed of itself (as the perpetrator of many a drowning).

“Who’s-Dead McCarthy: Stories by Kevin Barry”: Written by Kevin Barry. Directed by Paul Finocchiaro. Through July 21. Two hours, 10 minutes. $40-$65. Z Below, 470 Florida St., S.F. 415-626-0453. www.zspace.org

These two characters both have the flavor of modern-day folkloric figures — people with a hint of the supernatural about them, who stand for something larger — and that’s one strength Word for Word draws out in Barry’s stories. The production suggests our world, if we look to the margins, can have the charm of a fairy tale. Maybe we even have an unmet social need for such charmed characters; if we don’t have a McCarthy traveling round, marking the dead, relishing the grisly ends and genuinely lamenting the tragic ones, how does the rest of life have any meaning?

Reach Lily Janiak: [email protected]

Lily Janiak joined the San Francisco Chronicle as theater critic in May 2016. Previously, her writing appeared in Theatre Bay Area, American Theatre, SF Weekly, the Village Voice and HowlRound. She holds a BA in theater studies from Yale and an MA in drama from San Francisco State.

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