The Atheist

By Ronan Noone

Starring Campbell Scott

Barrow Street Theatre, New York

IRISH playwright Ronan Noone's new play The Atheist, now playing through January 4 at the Barrow Street Theatre in New York, is creating the kind of buzz that emerging playwrights only dream of. A feature article in The New York Times last week gave the show the clout to perform to packed houses, in the process elevating Noone to the winners circle of first rate Irish playwrights like Conor McPherson and Abbie Spallen.

In Noone's play we meet Augustine Early - the atheist of the title - the thoroughly unscrupulous beat reporter prepared do just about anything to get his next front-page scoop, even if he has to make it up.

Amoral, calculating and without a hint of fellow-feeling, Early is at once completely repellent and terrific company, and the sort of person some people dream of becoming if only they had his unusual nerve. But all of the cracking good stories he unearths come at a steep cost to his integrity and his personal life, and Noone, 38, is unsparing in his depiction.

"I wrote this play with four or five characters at first, but one voice came out very strongly so I ended up turning it into a monologue," Noone tells the Irish Voice.

"As I revised it I just threw caution to the wind and let the language do what it wanted to. Audiences come to plays and start jumping on the idea that this must be the way the writer himself is, which isn't necessarily true, so I had to overlook that idea and just put it all on paper and see what happened. This character was much more freeing once I allowed myself to do that."

The plot of The Atheist turns on a sex scandal involving a politician that the unscrupulous journalist quickly exploits to catch a perfect front-page headline. In the title role actor Campbell Scott brings irresistible charm and refined wit to a role that ought to make him seem reprehensible, but that ends up making you hope he succeeds.

What that says about us in the audience is what interests Noone, who doesn't shy away from asking awkward questions.

"There's a certain idea of moral relativism that comes to me when I think about playwriting. Nothing is either good or bad but thinking makes it so, as Shakespeare wrote," he says.

"Having worked as a journalist for a short period I was able to create a disreputable character and use that as a sort of metaphor, to see how far you could corrupt a person and at the same time justify his actions in such a way that the audience would accept it. In some way I even wanted to make them complicit."

Early tells us, in a very matter of fact tone, that it would have been impossible to believe in God and have done the things he did. What's more, since he's gotten away with all of his plans, it makes him all the more convinced there's are no scandalized angels plotting their revenge.

"I had to make sure Early had dimensionality, that he wasn't a particularly evil person, that he had a conscience once," says Noone. "But it was important that he actually enjoyed himself doing the terrible things he was doing too, making himself more reprehensible as he went along. Although I'm making it sound very serious now - and really the play is much more entertaining than that."

The play unfolds with Early reflecting on the story that made and ended his career. Although the characters in the drama can look more than a little bit stock at times, Scott's performance and Noone's diverting script have the sense to ferry you past them quickly.

After introducing us to the main players - the actress who wants to fast track her rise to the top, the local congressman with some voyeuristic fetishes, and the pious wife who's oblivious to everything around her - the playwright frees himself and the actor to take greater creative risks.

"Some people who are atheists have objected to the title of the play. They tell me just because they don't believe in God that I must be suggesting they're corruptible and immoral. But that's not my intention at all. I gave the play the title the character himself would have given it."

The Atheist is playing at the Barrow Street Theater, 27 Barrow Street, New York through January 4. For tickets and show times call 212-352-3101.