I Hear You and Rejoice NYC Reviews and Tickets
Show-Score Member Reviews (29)
See it if You appreciate Irish humor and enjoy solo performance pieces. This will, at turns, have you crying tears of laughter and sorrow.
Don't see it if You have no heart. You will be bored. Read more
See it if you want to experience Mikel Murfi's magnificent perf. &, as playwright, his splendid writing as he invokes the lives of these characters ..
Don't see it if you do not enjoy one-man shows,
See it if Extraordinary Irish Story Telling w/ deep feeling & insight by the remarkable MIKEL MURFI. Read poetic inscriptions on the steps. Must See!
Don't see it if You do not like One Man Shows with a True Master. Every evening, Mikel receives a full Standing Ovation.
See it if you are a fan of Ireland's greatest actor Mikel Murfi. He is brilliant with his chameleon ability to portray an entire town. Pure magic.
Don't see it if If you have a problem with Irish accents or don't enjoy one-man shows. Otherwise, I can't think of any other reason why not to see this
See it if Masterful writing & superb perf by Murfi, who is so funny, moving &believable in portraying cobbler's wife&lots of villagers that you feel*
Don't see it if You dislike 8 PM shows, especially if you live outside the borough. Read more
See it if Solo show with a masterful Irish storyteller who portrays a variety of a village characters (& the sounds of musical instruments & animals)
Don't see it if you cannot get into the variety of characters portrayed in solo shows, need bells & whistles sets, don't like moving stories Read more
See it if Must love Irish theater and one man shows.
Don't see it if Hate a very inconvenient venue, being stuck with one actor for the duration or looking at a drab bare stage and a barefoot actor. Read more
See it if you enjoy characters.
Don't see it if you have difficulty understanding accents.
Critic Reviews (14)
" 'I Hear You and Rejoice' is deeply moving and frequently hilarious, a profound portrait of a marriage, and an accomplished work from an artist who is carving out of his native County Sligo, a terrain as unforgettable as Brian Friel's fictional Ballybeg."
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"Accomplished entertainer though he is, Tony Cleary doesn’t have a thing on his creator...This virtuoso is strictly small-time compared to Mikel Murfi, the inexhaustibly multifarious writer, director and sole performer...It’s ultimately impossible to resist the gale theatrical force as Mr. Murfi presents his heroine through a multi-angled prism, with body language as precise, condensed and evocative as Morse code."
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“Murfi is amazing...Murfi employs his vocal and physical prowess to conjure up an entire community on the stage that is bare...An exquisite theatrical experience of the purest form...Murfi is breathtaking as he clowns, mimes and barrels all over the space while distinctively rendering each character...He creates a work that combines humor and pathos with a characteristic Irish dark sensibility...Murfi’s simple staging craftily serves the material...The production has momentum and visual depth.”
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"I have to confess that for much of the 75 minutes, I felt I was trying to get a handle on a runaway chicken of a yarn, flapping this way and that. Those who’ve suffered grief and loss may be able to catch, if they’re quick-eared, nicely turned phrases of touching consolation...Miserable sinner that I am, I found much of it deathly, and rejoiced not a lot."
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"By turns heart-warming and heart breaking, Mikel Murfi’s 'I Hear You and Rejoice' is a gentle, elegiac multi-character monologue about grief and love in later life...The world Murfi conjures is luminously clear, if somewhat narrow in scope. Given Murfi’s sweet-tooth for sentimentality, it is unsurprising that the piece sometimes wobbles towards the mawkish. However, a backbone of truthfulness, humour, and tremendous warmth supports the show."
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"Mikel Murfi contains multitudes – still. The Irish actor can fill a one-man show with people: men, women, children. He brings whole villages to life...Murfi is legion and it is quite a thing to watch...This is a show that abounds with love – so much that, in many ways, it struggles to find the words for it...But it works less through words than through feeling. Through Pat, you feel like you've known Kitsy Rainey all your life."
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"The Irishman delivers his words with a rhythm and a lyricism best described as hypnotic...Amid the laughter is a powerful meditation on the significance of a life well-lived, told from the bottom of a broken heart...What may sound like hyperbole elsewhere sounds perfectly natural in Murfi’s hands. This is a masterclass in the art of the monologue. Funerals have rarely been so enjoyable."
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"Here it is, pure distilled 100 per cent proof theatrical magic, conjured up by one man on one chair on an otherwise bare stage. The boundless power of words and storytelling to conjure worlds to involve and enchant an audience has rarely been so clearly demonstrated...Murfi is quite simply mesmerising in his engrossing evocation of this gentle world of vividly realised characters, not least his indomitable, irascible and warmly appealing wife."
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