(Ben Brantley’s article appeared in The New York Times, 12/4.)
That’s an awful lot of space for one mere mortal to fill up. The stage that has been created at St. Ann’s Warehouse for “Misterman” — Enda Walsh’s gripping (as in by the throat) monologue of a play — looks to be roughly half the size of a football field. And Cillian Murphy, the sole and slender actor who appears in it, is definitely not as big as your average football player.
Yet almost from the beginning of this breathless tale of an Irish village called Inishfree, which opened on Sunday night under Mr. Walsh’s direction, the electrifying Mr. Murphy seems to inhabit every millimeter of the vast and cluttered wasteland in which he has been let loose. And it’s not just because of all that running he does from one end of the stage to the other.