by Marc Miller

Noni Stapleton, and this is meant as a compliment, makes a great cow. As the title character of the one-woman show she wrote, Charolais, a headstrong French heifer on an Irish farm, Stapleton sashays around the barn and pasture, sniffs, moves her head and body in uncannily bovine ways, and cheers herself up with throaty renditions of La Vie en Rose and other chansons d’amoooooour. She may be the first singing-dancing cow on stage since Caroline, that new-cow-moo-cow-true-cow who stood by Dainty June in Gypsy. And though ultimately Charolais is a supporting character in this singular bucolic triangle—man, woman, cow—she makes the strongest impression. But when Stapleton is the man, the woman, or the man’s disagreeable mom, we’re pretty rapt as well.

 

The American premiere at 59 E 59, from Fishamble, the New Play Company, developed as part of the Dublin Fringe Festival, is a modest affair—simple costumes (Miriam Duffy), lighting (Tara Doolan; she does have a nice way of simulating late-afternoon light), and set (uncredited). The main story it tells is of Siobhan, a townie who comes to work on the farm of Jimmy Keane and his mum, the formidable Breda, who eyes every move of Siobhan’s with suspicion, and well she should. For, noticing Jimmy’s “square shoulders beneath your T-shirt,” she encourages his advances in graphic ways, and soon enough, as in a finger-wagging 1950s movie, she’s pregnant. Stapleton is a big-boned gal, not a conventional leading-lady type, but she’s secure in her self-image, and she exudes sexuality—a refreshing instance of offbeat casting. Her accent can grow a bit thick, and her language, besides being filthy, contains a number of local usages; a glossary is helpfully supplied. Read it first.

Charolais is pregnant, too, but only thanks to “the A.I. man,” the artificial insemination technician who jams a needle up her insides. Swoonily anticipating a sturdy bovine stud to do his duty, she’s pissed, and takes to disoriented pasture wanderings that Jimmy and Breda interpret as illness. As she’s a considerable investment, and her offspring a considerable potential cash cow, Jimmy pays undue attention to her—enough to make Siobhan jealous of her. Soon she’s fantasizing about doing both Charolais and Breda in, or perhaps arranging a convenient fatal farm accident for the latter.

 

 

It all works out, and even leads to a pretty-happy ending, thanks to an 11^th-hour twist of fate that won’t be revealed here. This, the one moment where Charolais is truly the center of attention and principal plot-pusher, would be an ideal time for Stapleton to transition into cattle mode and tell us what Charolais is thinking and feeling. Alas, it doesn’t happen, and Siobhan goes on perhaps longer than she should about her own story and emotions. But she’s an intriguingly complex creation: sympathetic, but far from entirely virtuous, and probably representative of any number of Irish rural women with limited options. Stapleton, as directed by Bairbre Ni Chaoimh (how on earth is that pronounced?), is winning and confident, able to convey a lot with an inflection or a look, whether in man, woman, or heifer mode.

 

No major achievement, then, this Charolais, but a compelling look at a part of the world most of us probably won’t get to experience personally, and a brisk hour-and-change workout for its author-actor. The atmosphere is so strong and fragrant that you can practically smell the peat, and characters, including the four-legged one, feel real. Best of all, we have in Stapleton a protagonist who defies expectations about what ingenues are supposed to look like and how they’re supposed to behave. Describing a late-pregnancy pass in front of a mirror, “me belly stickin’ right out and my head turned to the side,” Siobhan is elated to discover, “I look beautiful like this!” And you know what? She does.

 

Off-Broadway play.

 

Playing at 59 E 59 Theater C, 59 E 59^th St., through Sept. 24.

 

Ticketcentral.com; 212-279-4200.