Spirits That Haunt an Irish Writer

Joy Zinoman, who is directing "Shining City" at her Studio Theatre, describes that play's issues: "One man has had a metaphysical experience, the other has lost his faith." She and the playwright both characterize it as unexpectedly funny, Zinoman says that when the subplots branch into the men's personal lives, "There are two completely parallel stories going on, and they impact each other though they never intersect."

These are the elements that have made McPherson enough of a brand name that he is stopped for autographs outside the Booth Theatre, where "The Seafarer" is playing in the National Theatre production he directed in London last year. Jim Norton and Conleth Hill are reprising their acclaimed turns, and the cast -- including Ciaran Hinds as the visitor and David Morse as his prey -- figures to be considered when next spring's Tony nominations are sorted out.

Yet the plays are progressing. If "Shining City" continues edging away from the monologues that marked McPherson's initial style and more toward dialogue, the trend is further amplified in "The Seafarer." At nearly 2 1/2 hours, the newer play is his longest yet (his first with an intermission), and it even offers glimmers of hope.

"A lot of plays I would write," McPherson says, "I'd follow the depression into the depths and right on down to hell. That was fine with me. But with this one, no. Maybe there's a kind of maturity, or sump'n like that."

Maybe. The wiry redhead seems thoroughly composed, even when scarfing a sandwich in a shabby room upstairs in the Booth. He's scrambling to make the opening of Tom Stoppard's "Rock 'n' Roll" down the street, in part because it stars his friend Brian Cox, who helped solidify McPherson's budding reputation a decade ago by agreeing to be in the one-man "St. Nicholas." That engrossing saga of a drama critic who becomes involved with vampires turned into a hit for both men on each side of the Atlantic.

Coming to the Studio for "Shining City" breaks a long-standing pattern of never watching his own works once he's done with them. It's a bit of writerly self-doubt that he'd like to purge: "This is like a conscious effort on my part, trying to change my ways a little bit," says McPherson, adding: "I hope I'm not in agony."

That sensitivity extends to his reading habits, which pointedly don't include fiction -- it reminds him too much of what he calls his own "pain" of writing. But the nonfiction he reads seems to be fodder enough. Quantum physics was the topic when he got snagged on that phantom sixth sense, interested in layman's stuff about the implausibility of nothingness in the universe and the uncertainty of whether matter is particles or waves of energy.

"So," he says, sounding a bit like one of his lucid, bedeviled characters, "if everything is just energy vibrating at different frequencies and that's what we are as well, then of course we can have telepathy and see ghosts and see into the past. Of course we can. What's so weird about that? It's probably more than possible."