'Portia Coughlan': Her Irish Is Always Up

There's something out there . . . and it's Linda Murray.

"Portia Coughlan" is a ghost story, so the weirder and more extravagant Murray becomes as the haunted title character, the more realistic her performance feels. In this supernatural Irish drama by Marina Carr, Murray's torrents of irrational rage are as compelling as the stray dance-like gestures that seem to channel some connection to a dangerous netherworld.

The angry, bedeviled moments of Solas Nua's production are thrilling, but tantalizingly so; it's a fitful, uneven show. Carr's writing is wonderful, with a terrific poetic ear for loneliness and crude insult, which are Portia's two primary modes. Portia has always been regarded as the catch of the county, to hear the local men tell it, but she keeps everyone at bay -- even her rich, well-intentioned husband -- with brutal put-downs and furnace-blast tirades.

Carr's plotting is as enticing as her potent language, in a pulpy way. The tale has the whistling breeze of mystery, with secrets to be unearthed alongside the rural river where the play is set. The 30-year-old Portia is obsessed with her twin brother, Gabriel, who drowned when they were 15. The river, represented in Jessica Burgess's production by gurgling sound effects and dangling strips of shimmeringly lighted plastic, is a perpetual lure for our tormented heroine.

It's an exercise in atmosphere, but Burgess's production gets about halfway to realizing the full moody potential. The more she puts in, the more effective it is, from the honky-tonk dancing in the local pub to the eerie sound and light that often accompany Portia's strange encounters with Gabriel (wordlessly played by Camille Loomis). It's the silences and everyday exchanges that often fall flat in the wide, exposed brick environment of the H Street Playhouse.

Grady Weatherford and Adam Segaller fare well as a flirty barman and an old flame, respectively, and Jonathon Church cuts an unexpectedly sympathetic figure as Portia's rich husband. (The silver-tipped cowboy boots he gets from costume designer Lynly A. Saunders are dandy testament to the character's wealth, but they stand out like flares in designer Marie-Audrey Desy's extremely sparse setting.)

The family history gets pretty ugly, though, and Rusty Clauss isn't quite the hoped-for heart of darkness as the malevolent matriarch in a wheelchair. Too many of the family spats, uneventfully staged and performed, remain earthbound even as Carr's script happily careers toward B-movie excess.

That leaves you clinging to the few real bolts of lightning that Carr provides, the sheer fury of Portia's brooding disaffection, played by Murray as if she were the face and voice of doom itself. Now and then, Murray's lyrical dance moves merge with the otherworldly tones of Chris Pifer's sound design and suggest something alluringly mythic -- the powerful spiritual world that Portia's drawn to, and the enveloping experience this might have been.

Portia Coughlan, by Marina Carr. Directed by Jessica Burgess. Lighting design, Paul Frydrychowski. With Charlotte Akin, Declan Cashman, Bryan Cassidy, Frank Mancino and Stephanie Roswell. About two hours. Through April 6 at the H Street Playhouse, 1365 H St. NE. Call 1-800-494-TIXS or visit http://www.solasnua.org.