The Weir ( Archived )

Reviews

newspaper reviews

(L to R) Ruth Gemmell as Valerie, Anthony O’Donnell as Jim, Daniel Flynn as Brendan, Karl Johnson as Jack, Miles Anderson as Finbar

Photography from London West End production by Joe Dilworth

Direction: Ian Rickson, Design: Rae Smith, Lighting: Paule Constable

Cast: Miles Anderson, Daniel Flynn, Ruth Gemmell, Karl Johnson, Anthony O’Donnell

“This production of Conor McPherson’s play is so good, you walk away feeling positively shaky … McPherson has set the story in a pub in contemporary rural Ireland. The place is virtually empty and surely moribund as a business venture, though it is still frequented by a handful of locals. The appearance of an outsider promises a new lease of life. A young woman, Valerie, arrives from Dublin, intending to stay for a while. She is shown around by Finbar who has become a local property speculator and is now regarded dubiously by his old friends.

“Valerie is a source of fascination to this house of bachelors – spry old Jack, Jim the gravedigger and Brendan the barman. While you watch for flickers of romance, the chat becomes a round of spooky and increasingly distressing tales – of sprites knocking at doors, of ghouls seen by some and not others, and of a dead child heartbreakingly calling from another world.

“The understated naturalism of Ian Rickson’s cast is superb. Tiny gestures become thrilling… Rae Smith’s set is inspired, a scuffed brown bar surrounded by darkness, at once thoroughly lived-in and mournfully bleak. With Paule Constable’s almost imperceptible lighting changes intensifying the eerieness, the play shifts from the comical to the spine chilling with wrenching poignancy. Meanwhile, McPherson subtly explores communality and lonliness, and sympathetic sensitivity versus alienation on both the supernatural and the social level.

“The Weir is about people losing and looking for kindred spirits. McPherson also makes you see that a “ghost” might not be just a figure from a creepy folk tale or a mirage of someone already dead. It could also be the image of a soulmate long dreamed of, of a living person like Valerie who comes to fill a dark, sad gap in the isolated life of someone like Brendan.”

Kate Bassett DAILY TELEGRAPH, 19 October 1988

“The Weir is a gentle, soft-spoken, delicately crafted work, but its quietness belies its emotional power… McPherson’s writing is notable for its empathy. The bantering relationships of the men, and their discomfort at Valerie’s presence and the revealation of the horror that befell her, are brilliantly observed. Most impressive of all is that way that McPherson can shift the mood from jovial to chilling in an instant. The humour is easy and bittersweet, underscored by a mournful sense of loss…

“The exposed back wall of the Duke of York’s rises up behind Rae Smith’s dowdy, dimly-lit set, but the atmosphere is so vivid you can almost smell the stale Guiness and even staler dreams. The Weir remains a deft and hanuting piece of theatre, acted and directed with a rare sensitivity to mood.”

Nick Curtis EVENING STANDARD, 19 October 1998

“Never mind play of the week, this is my play of the decade. There’s blarney and a lovely vein of laughter in this. But McPherson’s play is not, like every other Irish play, about betrayal and conflict – more about the powers of consolation and community. I defy you to sit through this dry-eyed. A modern masterpiece.”

Robert Gore Langton THE EXPRESS, 19 October 1998

“The breaking in of a non-Irish cast for McPherson’s deserving hit reminds you how much this beguiling bar-room drama asks of its actors. A trio of marginalised Sligo men cajole one another to tell ever hairer yarns in the presence of a young woman brought to the local bar by a bumptious self-made acquaintance of theirs. McPherson asks the cast to abet him in an artful testament to the power of storytelling. Each tale is grippingly told, but the mellifluous blarney only emerges gradually, plainly fuelled by drink as much as much as the gift of the gab. Until then, Rickson ensures that preoccupied pauses and hesitations interrupt the wise-cracking and gossiping flow… The new cast is unimpeachable. The meeting of old and new Ireland remains an evocative encounter and The Weir’s belief in the universal balm of a story told and heard holds firm.”

Mike Higgins TIME OUT, 13 October 1999