Funny how things work out.
About eight years ago, Bill Rolleri wrote a play about a couple of Irish brothers who own a bar in Philly and are at odds over everything, from whether to put in a TV to whether they should sell the place below market value, given the fact that a serial killer prowling the neighborhood is really cutting into business.
A few months ago, Rolleri and some friends held a benefit at Fergie’s Pub in Philadelphia to raise money to stage the play. They didn’t really make enough, but Rolleri’s play, “The Bros. Flanagan,” will still go on. . .in a Philly pub, owned by an Irish guy who thinks TVs in bars are an abomination.
“What better place to see a play about two brothers who own an Irish pub in Philadelphia than in an Irish pub in Philadelphia,” asks producer Stephen Hatzai.
Fergus Carey, who owns Fergie’s and several other pubs in the city, first saw “The Bros. Flanagan” a few years ago when Rolleri presented it during a festival of new plays at InterAct Theater Company. “He came up to me and said, ‘I presume you have a day job,” deadpans Rolleri, raising an eyebrow or two from Hatzai and Carey who are sitting with him at a dark corner table one afternoon recently at the popular Sansom St. watering hole and restaurant.
“Did I?” asked Carey.
“No,” said Rolleri.
“I didn’t think so,” Carey says. “I’m not that rude. He makes things up,” he adds, nodding his wild, silvery locks toward Rolleri. “Which is a good skill for a playwright.”
“The Bros. Flanagan” is part of the 13th annual Philadelphia Live/Arts and Fringe Festival which kicks off September 4. The Inis Nua Theatre Company’s popular production of “Trad,” another Irish play, is also part of the festival, which is known for its cutting edge artists and performances and unconventional venues, like art galleries, the YMCA, churches and, of course, pubs.
Carey, who came to the US planning to write plays and act “and didn’t,” has become that theater essential—a supporter of the arts. He is chairman of the board of Brat Productions, a local theater company and “The Bros. Flanagan” won’t be the first play staged in his upstairs room. Just last winter, you could have seen a production of “Beowulf,” a musical monologue called “Buddy Felch Tells It LikeIt Is,” and “Go Irish: The Purgatory Diaries of Jason Miller” with your beer.
“Fergie is such a theater animal,” says Hatzai. “He loves things that are a little off-beat.”
And he thinks that a pub is just the place to see a play. “It’s a fun thing to sit in a bar and hear someone tell you a story,” says Carey, who won’t have a TV set in his pubs because he thinks they’re conversation killers. “And what is a play but great storytelling?”
Rolleri’s play certainly is.The story: Business at the Flanagan brothers’ struggling bar isn’t helped by the terror gripping the neighborhood in the wake of a series of murders, deemed by the police to be the work of one killer. But that’s not the only violence in this four-man play. The brothers are at each other’s throats over just about everything, but mainly about selling the bar whose market value drops with each scary headline.
Into the mix Rolleri adds a police officer who is part of the task force hunting for the killer and a real estate speculator with political ties whose aim is to “buy the bar for peanuts.” There’s a lot of drama, some comedy, and, of course, it being a play set in a bar, there’s some fighting.
It’s taken Rolleri eight years to get his play produced, but it hasn’t been sitting in a drawer somewhere. “The Bros. Flanagan” has been rewritten many times. “A lot of people’s hands have been in this play,” Rolleri says. “I’m almost ashamed to put my name on it.”
“But he did,” quips Hatzai.
And he got a few of the city’s finest actors to play in it. Character actors Michael Toner and H.Michael Walls play the eponymous brothers, while Jerry Rudasill is the police officer and Chris Fluck the smarmy real estate speculator.
But he never really raised enough money to produce it, which may be why he has more than a few butterflies. “We never hit our budget, so we’re going ahead on faith,” says Rolleri.
“The Bros. Flanagan” will run September 5, 12, 19, at 2 and 6 PM; September 6 and 13 at 4 PM; September 9 and 16 at 7 PM at Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia. Admission is $20. And if you buy one entrée, you get one free. Call 215-413-1318 for tickets or info, or order tickets online.
