“Sea Marks” by Gardner McKay at The Irish Repertory Theatre

Playwright and actor Gardner McKay wrote so lovingly about the sea in Sea Marks that I felt sure that it somehow must have been in his blood. My suspicions were confirmed: not only was McKay the great-grandson of shipbuilder Donald McKay, he was also an experienced sailor by the time he starred as Adam Troy in the television series Adventures in Paradise, playing a captain who sailed the South Pacific in a schooner. Written in 1971, Sea Marks is set in Cliffhorn Heads, a western island in Ireland, and Liverpool. Colm Primrose (Patrick Fitzgerald), a middle-aged herring and mackerel fisherman, lives alone in a small stone cottage. Content with his simple life that revolves around the sea, he has never married nor even traveled past Galway. He musters up the courage to write a letter to Timothea Stiles (Xanthe Elbrick), a pretty woman whom he met briefly two winters ago when she came to the island to attend a family wedding. Raised on a farm in Wales, Timothea works in Liverpool for a book publisher.