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Studio's 'The Seafarer'

Director Paul Mullins and actor Billy Meleady recently chatted with Backstage, as rehearsals began for Conor McPherson's "The Seafarer," running at Studio Theatre (Jan. 14 to Feb. 22). Neither director nor actor claimed to hold traditional religious beliefs, but both expressed strong faith in McPherson's religion-imbued fable about a man nicknamed Sharky who's visited by the Devil on Christmas Eve.

Mullins called the play "a really well-told yarn; a really great, elaborate story." He loved the fact that the other three characters in it are utterly clueless about the drama going on between Sharky and the vaguely sulfurous stranger, Mr. Lockhart. Sharky and Lockhart are only two among five ne'er-do-well Dubliners gathered for a bit of Christmas Eve drinking, storytelling and poker.

"The great fun of it and the great challenge of it is to make this extraordinary story [reach] that level of surprise," said Mullins of the play's blend of the mundane and the apocalyptic. "Three of these people never realize what happened here . . . that's as huge and epic in scale as it is regular . . . and common," said Mullins.

Meleady, a quiet, craggy Irishman who has been doing theater in Boston for 20 years, plays Sharky. "My first impression on reading it was that it was all Sharky's imagination," said the actor. Sharky is also, he noted, a newly sober alcoholic with a painful past in a roomful of drunks. The idea of the Devil in a suit sitting playing cards for a man's soul "evokes a lot of unpleasant imagery in one's mind -- 'The Lost Weekend,' " suggested Meleady.

Because the other characters have ongoing humorous chatter and situations, the actor continued, "it takes serious focus and concentration for Sharky to stay focused on his predicament. The audience seems to be watching comedy -- then you're going through this thing."

Although new to Washington, Meleady is not new to the role of Sharky, which he just played in Boston at the end of 2008 with the SpeakEasy Stage Company. He's also a member of the Sugan Theatre Company there, which specializes in Irish works. He even hails from a section of Dublin, Coolock, near where playwright McPherson grew up.

It was a rough life in blue-collar Ireland before the great economic boom of the 1990s. It was a tossup what kind of life Meleady and those around him chose, said the actor. "We were all on the dole, we were all unemployed. There was no work. So what do you do? You go on drugs or you use creativity . . . a lot of people turned to their creativity."

When visiting friends and family in Ireland, the actor said he gets teased for sounding too American or British (he spent time in England, too), but this side of the pond, he knows he sounds plenty Irish. While his fellow cast members Jeff Allin, Edward Gero, Philip Goodwin and Floyd King drill with dialect coach Betty Ann Leeseberg-Lange, Meleady has an easier task.

"I know exactly my shortcomings from years and years in Boston," he said. "Slowing down is key . . . to slow down from my natural patter."

Follow Spots

· The latest beneficiaries of the Canadian/Washington Theatre Partnership are Randy Baker and Jenny McConnell Frederick, co-artistic directors of Rorschach Theatre, and Janet Griffin, producing director of Folger Theatre. Every year since 2000, the partnership, sponsored by the Canadian Embassy and run by the Helen Hayes Awards, has sent artistic directors from two Washington area theater companies on a week-long theatergoing trip to Canada. Several Canadian plays have been produced here as a result.

· Howard University senior Zurin Villanueva, a native of Brooklyn, N.Y., has won Arena Stage's highly publicized open audition for the role of Yolanda in the theater's spring production of "Crowns." The musical-theater major was among 60 young women who auditioned to play the troubled teen character on Jan. 3 at the Lincoln Theatre. Villanueva and the 20 others who were called back had to sing, dance and perform a monologue before artistic director Molly Smith, "Crowns" director Kenneth Lee Roberson, music director E'Marcus Harper and actress Marva Hicks. Villanueva also got her Equity card for winning the audition.