The Sin of Pat Muldoon

In the course of The Sin of Pat Muldoon, playwright John McLiam has the hero reach through the window of his Santa Clara, California, home to pluck an orange from a tree growing in the back yard. Somewhat later he informs the audience that redwoods grow along the town's main street. I am prepared to testify that in my ten years' residence in the San Francisco Bay Area I have not seen a single orange tree there, and that no redwoods stand in the center of Santa Clara. It would, though, be a pleasure to forgive Mr. McLiam his horticultural inaccuracies if he had not insisted on writing a play around them.

But then, perhaps he hasn't really written a play. A critic reportedly once chastised Bernard Shaw for never having presented a death scene on the stage, whereupon GBS replied by writing the drawn-out, harrowing affair which takes up most of the last act of The Doctor's Dilemma. Possibly acting on the theory that he could prove himself a greater playwright than Shaw, McLiam has put together a death scene that lasts for three out of three acts and that gives James Barton, who plays Pat Muldoon, the opportunity to die not once, but twice. For a play which makes some claim to be a comedy, this is all pretty grim.

The ghoulish affair is inhabited by some appropriately unpleasant characters. The above mentioned hero, Pat Muldoon, is an impecunious Irish immigrant and tree surgeon whose sin consists of selling the last remaining bit of family property--perhaps symbolically, a back alley--and spending the money on a spree. Mr. Barton's performance in the role is a little incoherent, a fact which may be excused on the grounds that the cute little Irishisms and maunderings about the homeland which he is called upon to utter must have proved thoroughly repulsive to an actor of his stature and experience. I am not sure whether McLiam means it so, but the heart attack which strikes Muldoon down is certainly a well-deserved judgment of God.

Muldoon also has a family. It consists of a waspish, bigoted little wife who seems to spend most of her considerable energy in making everybody including her husband feel uncomfortable. Mrs. Muldoon is played by Katherine Squire, who deserves some sort of award for a heroic, if unsuccessful, struggle in the face of overwhelming odds.

The remainder of the group includes two daughters, the elder of whom understandably enough wants to leave home, and the younger who does so by marrying a Mexican. The hard, bright manner of Elaine Stritch in the role of the elder daughter provided the only relief throughout an evening otherwise drowned in sentimental goo. As for the performances of Patricia Bosworth, the second Muldoon offspring, and Gerald Sarracini, the Mexican bridegroom, they are workmanlike but nothing more.

The priest, as played by James Olson, is of the young, athletic type, but given to suffering for his faith. Or so we are led to believe by the fact that at one point, and for no clearly discernible reason, he breaks down in tears. I must admit an irreligious impulse to cheer at Pat's ultimately successful efforts to die without letting him administer the Last Sacraments of the Church. But that is the only thing The Sin of Pat Muldoon presents to cheer about.