Two Strands of theatre unite brilliantly in Conor McPherson’s The Weir. In Irish love of fable and Chekhovian sense of waste. (…)
The less said of the plot, the better: you should discover it for yourself. But the action takes place in a small rural bar, complete with smoking stove, in the Sligo or Leitrim area on a windly, wintry night. The regulars’ tippling is interrupted when Finbar, the local property-owning hotshot, brings in a fugitive from Dubai, Valerie, who has just bought a house in the area. As the man show Valerie black-and-white bar-room photographs of the neighbouring weir and abbey, they start to spin a series of supernatural tales.
Each story, in classic fashion, reveals something about its teller. Jack, the crusty bachelor garage-owner, shows his love of language and fireside yarn. Finbar displays the insecurity concealed by his cock-of-the-walk strut. And Jim, Jack’s quiet helpmate tethered to his aged mammy, unspools his own preoccupation with death. But McPherson’s play is much more that a series of hair-rising ghost stories. It offers, in a little over 90 minutes, an extraordinary rich pictures of Irish rural life, of its superstitions, its solitude, its strong pecking order, its clannish resentment of outsiders – especially the German tourists who arrive like swallows each summer.
PcPherson is also saying something about sexuality and the nature of the Irish imagination, about the residual fear of woman …
Michael Billington, Guardian