In a remote bar in rural Ireland, ancient folk tales and religious mysticism swirl like tobacco smoke in a self-inflicted fug of benign credulity. Here, human companionship is the balm for loneliness, and misshapen personalities fit jigsaw-like into a rich canvas of interdependence. The ‘dark’ at your back is threatening and the refuge from unknown, but fleetingly glimpsed forces is found in the comfort and companionship of other wary souls around an inviting fire – with a pint and a ‘small one’. Storytelling is as natural and easy as a game of darts.
This is refined writing that elevates prose to its full height and where the play as a whole, is a kind of poetry. This is theatre, not quite as stark as say, Godot, but reduced nonetheless to its essential elements of storytelling in a darkened room. In a way the star of the show is the craic, where language is played like an instrument of infinite notes. On the face of it The Weir is a mere collection of oft-repeated ghost stories, but the whole is far greater than the sum of its parts. Tales of fairy folk knocking on doors, ghostly apparitions on the stairs, a ghostly pervert and a tragic story of parental loss all reveal something of the teller.
Finbar (Steven Elliot), a successful businessman and by reputation a bit of a charmer, is showing Valerie (Orla Fitzgerald) an incomer from Dublin, around the village. He brings her into Brendan’s (Patrick Moy) bar where bachelor locals, Jack (Simon Wolfe) and Jim (Richard Clements) are spinning out an inclement evening. A certain envy colours their talk as news of the newcomer has spread and the already married Finbar seems to be on the scent of some extra-marital diversion. However, when Finbar and Valerie enter, sex is left at the door and what follows is far more penetrating and interesting an examination of character than below the waist tittle-tattle characteristically manages.
Here is a community where you can say what you like about your neighbour, say it to their face indeed and things are soon resolved. Conor McPherson shows us a way of being without recourse to duplicity that the apologetic and frictionless English smile at with familial admiration and envy. Delivering this is a company of actors whose performances one cannot fault. Peerless characterizations that deliver with each considered syllable, minute shrug and gesture. And all managed by touch sensitive directing that paints mood and tension with watercolour strokes of translucent delicacy.
It does us good to be reminded of the quality of the tools available to the writer every now and again and this twenty year old, Olivier Award winning play which is a joint production with Cardiff’s, Sherman Theatre, showcases the sharpest one in the box. ★★★★★ Graham Wyles 28th October 2016
