By Amanda Estes
Staff Writer
As co-founders of the premier classic and contemporary Irish theater company in New England, Tony and Susan Reilly of South Portland, are pulling back the curtain on a dark aspect of Irish society people have only recently begun to talk about.  
“We’re ready as a company – to start pushing some boundaries,” says Susan Reilly, a professional marketing writer by trade and managing director of the American Irish Repertory Ensemble (AIRE). Tony Reilly, her husband, is the theater company’s artistic director.
Approaching its fourth year of existence, AIRE is performing on a new stage, the St. Lawrence Arts Center in Portland – a “big step up,” Susan Reilly says. Previously, the company performed in a smaller venue at the Portland Performing Arts Center.
 “I think our next big dream is finding a home,” Susan Reilly says.
Her husband adds, “I think our dream is to find a place in South Portland.”
Currently, AIRE’s box office is run out of their home.  
“I think we’ve shown with Lyric [Music Theater] and [The Stage at] Spring Point, we can support theater here,” he says.
In addition to finding a permanent home, Reilly says their goals for AIRE include producing on a regular basis or performing at least two shows a year.
Far from being a niche theater, the Reillys say they choose works with heart that appeal to any audience and not just Maine’s Irish population.
The couple, however, has long been immersed in Irish culture. Susan Reilly says her Irish heritage comes from her mother’s side and – being quite proud of that ancestry – says she used to hang Irish flags in her college dorm. Tony Reilly says both of his parents are from the “old country” and recalled spending the summer in Ireland from the time he was a boy until he was a teenager.
Sitting next to a fire in their living room, as Monday’s storm made the sky thick with snow, Susan Reilly says they first came to Maine in 1997. They stayed in the state for about a year, becoming associated with the Irish American Club of Maine and performing a piece they wrote entitled, “Women of Ireland.”
The Reillys returned to their native New York  – Susan is from upstate and Tony grew up in the city –  but say they were impressed with Portland’s theater offerings.
They returned to Maine in 2003 and a year later put on their first AIRE production, “The Tinker’s Wedding and Other Tales,” a series of one act plays. Enough people came to the performance to convince them to continue.
In 2006, AIRE received the New England Theatre Conference’s Moss Hart Memorial Award for the best production in the professional division for “A Christmas in Kerry,” a series of Christmas stories written by John Keane.
A Julliard-trained actor who helped form a Shakespeare theater company in New York City, Tony Reilly also acts in AIRE’s performances. In their latest production, however, Reilly will remain behind the scenes, directing a largely female cast.
“I wouldn’t look good in a nun’s outfit,” he says.
Currently playing Thursday through Sunday until Jan. 27, “Eclipsed,” reveals the stories of the Magdalene Laundries. Under the supervision of the Catholic Church, the laundries evolved from a refuge for prostitutes to a place where unwed mothers and promiscuous girls were forced to work as servants in harsh conditions under the supervision of Catholic nuns, according to AIRE’s Web site. Laundries also existed in England and Scotland, but the last laundry in Ireland did not close until 1996.
The playwright, Patricia Burke Brogan, was a nun in a Galway laundry in the 1960s and through, “Eclipsed,” tells the story of a young novice’s crisis of faith.
“The whole topic is pretty stunning,” says Tony Reilly. “The stories only came out [during] the last 15 years.”
Like any artistic director, Reilly has put his own touch on the play through his direction to the core female actresses.
“The thing that I strive to do in this play [is] create an ensemble with the women,” he says.
He is impressed, he says, of the way the women have bonded and created a small  world on the stage.    
Because there are so many women’s roles in the play, Reilly says they had to reach out to actors outside of their familiar cast and they relished the chance to bring in new faces.
Susan Reilly, who plays one of the nuns supervising the laundry, says it’s easy to focus on the abuse the penitents suffered while in the laundries, but she says the deeper story is about the novice’s questioning of her faith and her courage to challenge the powerful rule of the church, represented by the older Mother Superior.
“What do you do in that situation?” she says of the novice’s struggle. “Do you speak up?”
Reilly says “Eclipsed” represents darker, more controversial material than previous AIRE productions, but she says people want to be moved when they go to the theatre. Irish theater, in the Reillys’ opinion, is particularly beautiful.
“It’s the language,” says Tony Reilly. “There’s a poetry to the language, a musicality to the language. [The Irish] just have the gift of gab. They love to talk and it comes out in their theater.”
Irish theater is often bittersweet, Susan Reilly says, and representative of the coping spirit of the Irish. The struggle to survive is leavened with humor, something she estimates Mainers can relate to as we deal with our sometimes unforgiving climate.
Tony Reilly agrees Maine and Ireland aren’t so different.
“We just said, ‘Oh my God, it looks like the west of Ireland,” he recalls. “It looks like Galway.”
For more information about the American Irish Repertory Ensemble, visit www.airetheater.com. “Eclipsed” performances run Thursday through Sunday at the St. Lawrence Arts Center in Portland until Jan. 27. Performances start at 7:30 p.m. on Thursdays, 8 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays and 2 p.m. on Sundays. Tickets are $17 general admission and $13 for students, seniors and Thursday shows. For reservations call 799-5327.