No more than two minutes pass without some reference to, or abuse of, alcohol in Conor McPherson's The Seafarer. The drink drives the action, the characters and even the unseen future in this darkly sinister play set in Ireland — which, with the fickleness of liquor, exposes both truth and lies in the path of its mayhem, leaving its audience reeling in the wake.
    Set in an unkempt bachelor pad in North Dublin, The Seafarer plays out in the uncertain realm of alcohol-influenced perception, where paranoia and boastful ego go hand in hand, and where the only certain condition is one of enforced solitude, even with several drinking partners inhabiting the same room. The Arden Theatre’s production walks a fine line in attempting to extract the deeply buried insecurities of these men, sometimes succeeding in bringing the subtle twists of each character to the surface, and sometimes obliterating the intended nuances in an alcoholic haze.
    A mournful clarinet opens the play as the audience sits in darkness — which, as we soon realize, is representative of the world of Richard Harkin (Brian Russell), in whose dirty house the play is set. Blinded by a recent head injury, Richard copes with his suddenly dark world with alcohol. His brother Sharky (William Zielinski) has returned from an imprecisely described job in the south of Ireland to take care of Richard, tending to his basic needs as best as he can, but obviously affected by a checkered past and the fear of continued failure. The clumsy, oafish Ivan (a slovenly Anthony Lawton) contributes nothing but empty beer bottles and empty chatter to the group, which is soon joined by the neurotic Nicky (Joe Hickey), who has stolen Sharky’s wife and who intrudes with a nervous energy and a shared fondness for the bottle.    Together, these men are celebrating Christmas, heartily slapping each other on the back and toasting life and the holiday, but the stage reeks of insecurity and fear as they are strangely united by the common bond of loneliness. When an infamous stranger — one well known to sinners — who goes by Mr. Lockhart joins the party, he further exacerbates the competitive tension by suggesting a game of poker, where the stakes are high but all are compelled to play without reprieve until the winner determines all of their fates.
    Mysterious as this stranger’s origins are (played here by Greg Wood), and as high are the stakes, this production lacks some of the chilling, essential fear necessary to elevate this play from ghost story to compelling drama. With the exception of Mr. Zielinski, whose quietly desperate Sharky hits notes of barely restrained rage and fear, the rest of the cast lacks the essential undercurrent of hollow desperation the play demands to move it from lesser fiction to consequential parable. Although we feel for Sharky as he literally plays for his life against the sinister Mr. Lockhart, the other characters feel thinner: Richard is predictably angry and constantly drunk as he battles with his new reality, while Ivan and Nicky dart in and out of the plot without any real bearing on it.
    The men’s accents also fade in and out, with Mr. Zielinski, who acted in Mr. McPherson’s The Weir, finding the most constant groove. With a narrowly defined plot such as this — the entire play is confined to a single living room — anything that distracts from the relationships between the men is a shame.
    Certainly the subtleties of Mr. McPherson’s narrative weave an enticing web through The Seafarer, but all too often, they are buried within the loud, overbearing dramas of drunkenness, where one is never truly sure what is real and what is merely a drink-induced fantasy.

Lindsay Warner can be reached at culture@lindsaywarner.net