A star, but no spirit

PROVIDENCE -- Throughout the 90 minutes of "Dublin Carol," you never stop noticing that it is carefully written, meticulously designed, and skillfully acted. This is not a good thing.

Conor McPherson has indeed written his study of an alcoholic undertaker's assistant with care; Amy Morton directs the handsomely grubby Trinity Repertory Company production with fine attention to detail; and the three actors, led by William Petersen of "CSI" fame, deliver their speeches with admirable expertise. But the play never comes alive.

McPherson made his name as a darkly modern Irish storyteller with "St. Nicholas" and "The Weir," then built on it with "Shining City"; at his best, he can spin memorable tales of haunted men. But in "Dublin Carol" the storytelling founders because John Plunkett, the defeated little man at its center, is haunted by some very unoriginal ghosts.

He drinks too much, you see. And it has cost him. He abandoned his wife and children; he never amounted to much at work; he's full of that particularly poisonous mix of self-loathing and self-pity that alcohol often catalyzes.

Perhaps something new could be made of all this, but by the time John reveals his boyhood shame at hiding when his father beat his mother, we're too far down the path of therapeutic drama to find our way back. We've also spent far too much time in the company of a character whose monologues are less interesting than he imagines.

That's part of the point, of course: that John cannot see how tiny and pathetic he is. The point never gets more complicated than that, though, so John's long-winded introspection becomes tedious and unlikely. The guy's still drinking; it's just not believable that he would face -- and describe -- his past in the detail that McPherson forces upon him.

But of course facing his past is implied in both the title and the structure of "Dublin Carol," with its Christmas Eve visitations upon a woefully misguided man. And the ghost of Christmas past does indeed appear, in the form of Mary, a pinched-looking woman whose relationship to John the playwright teasingly withholds for too long.

She's come to tell him that his estranged wife is dying, a revelation that provokes the script's most melodramatic outpourings. But Mary's been estranged from him, too, and the way she and John open up to each other in this scene simply doesn't ring true.

John's interactions with Mark, the young nephew of the funeral parlor's ailing owner, also feel more like plot devices than real human connection. Mark is drifting a bit, and maybe he already drinks too much; OK, he could be headed down John's dreary path. But their two long scenes together have the painstakingly constructed air of an acting exercise, not the spontaneous pulse of real life.

You can see why actors would be drawn to this play -- it's full of lyrical, writerly passages, with lots of highs and lows and opportunities for emotional shading. Petersen negotiates the turns like a pro, as does Rachael Warren as Mary (though her Irish accent seems to lilt less naturally than his). Danny Mefford makes the most of the underwritten Mark, and Trinity, as usual, provides beautifully appropriate costumes and set.

For all that, though, "Dublin Carol" is missing some essential spark. It wants to be chilling, but it only left me cold.

Louise Kennedy can be reached at kennedy@globe.com.