You could call it a family reunion of sorts. When Frank McGuinness’s Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme opens at the Wilbur Theater this weekend under the joint auspices of the Huntington Theatre Company and Broadway in Boston, the " sons " will be represented by what has become a band of brothers. Six of the play’s battalion of eight soldiers journeying from the Northern Irish province of Ulster to fight a bloody World War I battle at France’s River Somme are played by the same actors who appeared in last summer’s Williamstown Theatre Festival production of the play, which was also directed by Huntington Theatre Company artistic director Nicholas Martin. Among those who are brushing up their brogues to revisit the fraternal order are TV and film actors Scott Wolf and Justin Theroux.
" That’s an amazing thing about bringing most of the company from Williamstown — we’re already a really tight-knit group of guys, " says Wolf after a day of rehearsal, with a sheepish grin that recalls his signature role as a member of another tight-knit group, the beleaguered Salinger family of Fox’s Party of Five. " No one can really be on an island of his own in this play and survive. Everyone has to be singing the same song. [But] the play is so extraordinary and so solid that it can survive the loss of any one of us. In a great way, adding two new guys has reshaped the group. Having them in rehearsals has helped us feel we’re very much in process. This is not polishing up a finished show. It’s actually cracking it open again and finding things we never had the chance to in Williamstown. "
Observe the Sons, which was first produced in Dublin in 1985, established Ireland’s McGuinness as a playwright of international repute. Told as a flashback to 1916, a time of widespread civil unrest in Ireland, the story follows a brigade of eight Protestant army volunteers as they banter in the barracks, muse over their reasons for fighting, and become through-thick-and-thin comrades. Although each has his individual motive, the perspectives collectively describe the complex psychological landscape of war.
" We’re working with such an extraordinary piece of material that we could work on it forever and still be shaping an understanding of it, " Wolf continues. " It’s so dense, and since it’s written by a poet, so much of it is figurative. It seems like the layers are endless. It doesn’t feel like we’re close to coming to the end of discovering new stuff every time we run through it. "
The political climate since September 11 has triggered a salvo of new revelations for the actors, so it’s an entirely different experience from last summer. " This play is always vital because there always seems to be some conflict in the world, " says Theroux over the phone from LA, where’s he’s taken a short break from rehearsal to work on his next film. " There’s always people pointing guns at each other, killing each other, so in that sense it’s no different [from last summer]. Of course, doing it in this country now, it takes on a slightly different tone, and certain passages can be interpreted differently, or you can relate to them more easily — like [the characters’] anger or patriotism. "
" I think it will hit home once we start performing in a room full of people who have all been going through the past six months, " Wolf predicts. " The play is relevant to people in this country in ways it hasn’t been ever before. McGuinness’s look at war is really fascinating and unforgiving, not sugar-coated. He doesn’t dance around what’s going on. It can help shape people’s understanding about war and how they feel about sacrifice, which I think people need to know now more than ever, [considering] the threat of the damage that people who are so full of hate can do. In the Irish conflict that the play deals with — and what we see going on in the Middle East — there are such wildly opposing philosophical and religious views, I don’t know if they’re ever going to square up. It makes you wonder: are we always gonna kill each other in the name of those differences? I haven’t even tried to wrap my mind around the whole thing. "
" It’s such a special play, " Theroux concludes, " and it’s such a special group of actors, I think, and we really bond over it. And it’s definitely helpful that all the same qualities you would imagine in combat are there: trust and love and all the things you would want in the person beside you. "
Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme is presented by the Huntington Theatre Company in collaboration with Broadway in Boston, Clear Channel Entertainment, at the Wilbur Theatre March 30 through May 5. Tickets are $25 to $60; call (617) 931-2787.
