I’ve been interested in the life and work of the playwright and actor Jason Miller for some time - “That Championship Season” is the play that got me interested in theater, I grew up in west Scranton, I met Miller briefly (in a bar, of course), and, well, there’s more than a few spectacular Irish flame-outs in my own family...

There’s not much biography available on Miller, other than the basic facts in Who’s Who (of which I’m aware, anyway), and Miller himself shunned autobiography. Other than the plays that remain in print and the filmed performances, there isn’t much primary source research available. Mr. Jacobs conducted extensive interviews with Miller’s friends and associates when writing this one-act play, and it shows. It’s a well written piece, and insightful on the self-destructive mythology of the Irish-American writer, I’d disagree with his dramatic assessment of Miller’s final years - I suspect that Miller was probably the happier for “turning his back on Hollywood” and returning to his hometown, which probably was a more fertile creative environment for Miller than L.A. (a sentiment that Mr. Jacobs has Miller himself proclaims in the play). I also suspect that, despite the effects of alcoholism on Miller’s career and relationships, he was respected and liked by many in Scranton, and was not the stereotypical “town drunk” but was enjoying something of a creative resurgence at the time of his death.

That aside, “Go Irish” is a well-written play, and I’d like to see it performed on the stage. I’d recommend it to anyone interested in Jason Miller, and anyone interested in Irish-American writers, and how the need to live up to an image can overtake one’s self.

Go Irish, indeed.