Kasey Mahaffy and Ensemble. [Photo by Craig Schwartz]
“I think this might be one of the most entertaining and well-rounded pieces of theater,” Mahaffy declares with the conviction of an actor who has found that rare role worthy of complete surrender.
His Alfie Byrne—a gay bus conductor navigating the suffocating orthodoxies of 1963 Dublin—represents what he calls “the most personal” character of his three-decade career.
“I’ve never played a character this personal in my entire career in the theater, which is upward of 30 years now,” he explains.
The unmistakable resonance in Mahaffy’s voice when discussing Alfie’s journey suggests audiences are witnessing something beyond craftsmanship.
“I sing this song called ‘Welcome to the World,’ which is after everything bad that could possibly happen to this man has happened. He’s been damn near ostracized and made fun of and beat up, and he’s pretty terrified. He makes a decision that his story isn’t going to end that way. His story isn’t going to end in a depressing, sad, victim way. He sings this song, where he basically says, I’m going to take a stand in my life and I’m going to take up space and be who I am and be who I really need to be,” Mahaffy explains, his voice catching with emotion. “The music is so evocative. I mean, it’s stunning. It’s a stunning piece of music.”
Rodriguez-Elliott, who has steered A Noise Within for years with an unwavering commitment to theatrical substance, discovered this relatively obscure McNally-Flaherty-Ahrens collaboration through serendipity.
“Well, I didn’t know this musical at all,” she confides, crediting a music director’s recommendation during last year’s “Sweeney Todd” production. What she found was a work that interrogates precisely what theater can mean to those seeking refuge from societal constraints.
“For this group of individuals, I think they feel the most alive when they’re creating art,” Rodriguez-Elliott observes, drawing the parallel between the play’s amateur thespians and the communal act of theater-making itself. This meta-theatrical dimension provides the production its most compelling framework—art about art that manages to avoid solipsism through its unflinching examination of human connection.
Her insistence that “it feels like a play with music more than a musical per se” hints at how she has approached the material—privileging the psychological terrain over spectacle.
When questioned about staging a work set in 1963 Dublin for 2025 Pasadena audiences, Rodriguez-Elliott is unapologetic: “What this story deals with, I suspect that we will be examining and looking at a hundred years from now.”
Most revealing is the artistic intimacy between director and performer.
“She’s the only one who I would ever want to direct me in this play,” Mahaffy insists. “She understands it. She understands what pitfalls to avoid. She knows me as an artist so well, so she knows how to shape what I do to have the very best storytelling.”
This trust has evidently liberated Mahaffy to navigate the delicate contours of Alfie’s awakening with both vulnerability and precision.
The production’s exploration of community — particularly how prejudice dissolves in the face of authentic human connection — provides its moral center.
All aboard! But hurry, shows end June 1.
