The lights come up on a beaming Tommy Magill as he chatters about that earliest moment in time, when a whisper grew until it became a roar, and out of that roar came the voice of God saying, “Let there be light.” In Enda Walsh’s Misterman, Tommy is filled with the joy that he hears every moment in that voice, and he’s worried that his fellow residents of the Irish town of Inishfree may not hear it as vibrantly as he does. “We have forgotten God’s words,” he intones darkly. “Sin has become our religion, greed our communion, and evil our God.” So after emptying the “phlegmy basin” under his tubercular mother’s bed and paying his respects at his father’s grave, he heads out each day to preach kindness and love to the likes of stooped old Mrs. O’Leary, who thinks Tommy’s so sweet she wants to kidnap him, and fat Charlie, who’s only really interested in food, and car collector Aidan, who strikes Tommy as a possible fellow evangelist until he notices the pinup calendar in his garage. The world being an imperfect place, Tommy is frequently disappointed in his fellow Inishfree-ites. What isn’t evident until he falls for—and is disappointed by—a lovely lass named Adele, whom he’s prepared to adopt as his guardian angel, is that he has been storing up life’s little disappointments until they’ve just about reached critical mass. With his cherubic visage and genial manner, Dan Brick would seem to be just the guy to sneak up on audiences as Tommy. And if he didn’t have to practically hyperventilate to embody the entire town, he might just surprise the crowd when things turn dark. But Linda Murray’s staging for Solas Nua encourages him to push and strain, and by about 10 minutes into an evening that’s only 45 minutes long, he’s perspiring so heavily he looks more disreputable than saintly. So a show that means to shock, or at least startle, loses its ability to do either. In fact, Misterman ends up not packing much emotional punch at all. Which is a shame, because a good deal of cleverness has gone into not just the central performance, but also Chris Pifer’s sound design, and a physical production that is at once evocative—an onstage downpour is particularly well-managed—and spartan. —Bob Mondello