I Hear You and Rejoice NYC Reviews and Tickets
Member Reviews (24)
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 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 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.
See it if You’re a romantic
Don't see it if One person show is not your thing
See it if you would like to see another bravura performance by one of the great international actors of our day.
Don't see it if you've no need to see another Irish theater piece that focuses on the quirkiness of its very Irish characters, or you don't like solo shows. Read more
Critic Reviews (13)
"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."
Read more
“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.”
Read more
“It’s lovely to see how a simple twist of a hip can suggest a woman who is annoyed, and a tugging gesture at the armpits can suggest an ill-fitting bra...A program note indicates that encounters Murfi had with groups of older people in Sligo helped formulate these remarkable theater pieces...In addition...it is a tremendous pleasure to witness the remarkable Murfi, dressed in pants, suspenders, and a shirt, take stage so effectively with nary a prop save for a chair.”
Read more
"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."
Read more
"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."
Read more
"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."
Read more
"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."
Read more
"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."
Read more