Unlike many solo performers, Byrne is often low-key and understated, which might be why his show has not been pulling in audiences (it was supposed to run until December 31 but now will close November 20). But there are pleasures to be had from Byrne’s approach, his laconic delivery, and his diverting if familiar storytelling.

 

Even if the show seems unstructured—the first act, comprising anecdotes of his childhood, bounces around pleasantly yet fuzzily, while the second act, in which Byrne recounts becoming an actor, is more sharply focused—Byrne remains resolute in his determination not to overdo, to overemphasize or to overact. The Irish gift of gab and charming accents continue apace, yet are grounded by his ability to make them serve his stories. 

 

If there’s little in the way of originality in these anecdotes of a young lad growing up in a working-class neighborhood and attending a far-off seminary to study, the warmly intimate family scenes are nicely sketched in—particularly his elation when he remembers going to the movies with his beloved grandmother—as are the mildly humorous descriptions of the real characters populating Dublin’s streets.

 

It’s the second act, when Byrne joins a third-rate theater company and learns how to act, where the memories get more pointed and even poignant. Somewhat surprisingly, he rarely drops the names of the many playwrights, directors and fellow performers he’s worked with. When he tells a particularly engaging story about one of his acting heroes, Richard Burton (with whom he starred in a 1983 TV miniseries about composer Richard Wagner), it becomes far more urgent when he confesses his own realization that alcohol took hold of him as easily as it did Burton himself.

 

That confession—along with earlier ones about the shocking drowning of a childhood friend and physical abuse by a priest who taught him at the seminary—is integrated somewhat awkwardly into the framework of chatty raconteur that Byrne and director Lonny Price have created. But that, too, is part of the actor’s onstage appeal: he is bright, witty, handsome—if not Brad Pitt level—someone you’d see in a pub, trading barbs with his buddies while kicking back a few pints.