McPherson's Acclaimed Drama at Guild Hall Begins Wednesday

Guild Hall will present “The Night Alive,” a play by Conor McPherson, from Wednesday through May 22, with performances at 8 p.m. Wednesdays through Sundays. The production is directed by Stephen Hamilton and will feature J. Stephen Brantley, Molly Carden, Rob Di Sario, Tuck Milligan, and Kevin O’Rourke.

First performed at London’s Donmar Warehouse in 2013, the play is set in a squalid, cluttered flat inhabited by Tommy, a defeated middle-aged man who brings home a young woman, an occasional prostitute covered in blood, whom he has rescued from a beating. The play follows the relationship between the two damaged people and the effects of Tommy’s good deed on his uncle Maurice, who owns the building, and Doc, his sometime roommate.

Mr. McPherson, one of Ireland’s leading contemporary playwrights, “has a singular gift for making the ordinary glow with an extra dimension, like a gentle phosphorescence waiting to be coaxed into radiance,” according to Ben Brantley, who reviewed the play when it opened to enthusiastic audiences in London.

Mr. O’Rourke, who won a Screen Actors Guild Award for his work in the HBO series “Boardwalk Empire” and has a distinguished career in theater, film, and television, will play Tommy. 

“I got a call from my agent who heard from a casting director that they were looking for the role of Tommy in ‘The Night Alive,’ ” he said while taking a break from a two-day stint on the set of “Law and Order.” “I had not read the play, but when they said it’s going to be six weeks in East Hampton, I said, ‘Well, I bet I can get some golf in.’ I read it, and it’s just a terrific play and a great part. I thought, I’m an idiot if I don’t take this opportunity to do it.”

While he hadn’t worked with Mr. Hamilton, they had many mutual friends, and a telephone conversation ensued during which “we had this commonality. We started talking about the play, and the Irish aspects of it, which really appealed to me. We agreed there was a kind of dark humor in it that recalled Beckett or Pinter. I told him I would love to do it.”

Mr. O’Rourke has never acted on the East End, but he has family in Sag Harbor and close friends in Amagansett, so he is no stranger here. “The play is really powerful, it has this wonderful, existential dark humor. It’s about a guy sort of in a midlife crisis, and, being of a certain age, I can relate to that. The way it’s being staged is very intimate, very close.”

He was referring to the fact that the audience, which will be limited to 75, is seated onstage in what is known as an “alley staging.” The performance space is a 25-by-10-foot rectangle, with the audience on the two long sides and doors and walls at the two ends.

“We’re also learning how to talk with Irish accents,” said Mr. O’Rourke. “Three of us from the cast were at Rowdy Hall the other day, and we decided we would talk with Irish accents all night. All the waitresses thought we were from Ireland.”

Tickets are $35, $33 for members. Due to the limited seating, theatergoers have been encouraged to purchase their general-admission tickets in advance.