In a show shaded with supernatural chills, it hardly seems real that the lead actor has never set foot in the West End before. At 70, Brendan Gleeson has been dazzling us on screens big and small for decades but not everyone can make the transition to London’s stages.
I’m desperately sad to report that, based on his performance here, we have been absolutely robbed for far too long.
Set in a remote local pub in the wilds of Country Leitrim in the mid-90s, the Irish star is magnificently, magnetically vivid – as craggy, crevassed and weatherbeaten as the landscape we imagine beyond the walls. He sweeps us into Conor McPherson’s meandering, melancholy play as surely as the winds we hear howling outside that have driven five souls to take shelter together.
As the night slowly, beautifully unwinds, it becomes clear that each is actually seeking shelter from life, loss and, most piercingly, their own ghosts.
Gleeson’s bachelor Jack owns the local garage, which is becoming obsolete, and employs dopey Jim (Séan McGinley), who cares for his ailing mother and gets all the best one-liners, deployed with sleepy precision. Both are considerably aged up from McPherson’s text but it only adds to the pathos.
Ludicrous wheeler-dealer Finbar (a manically over-egged Tom Vaughan-Lawlor) lords it over everyone while desperately seeking their approval and ineptly sleazing over attractive newcomer Valerie (Miss Scarlet star Kate Phillips). The ruggedly stoic Brendan (Owen McDonnell) tends bar. All ache with loneliness.
On a gorgeously evocative set, the perfectly pitched mundane chitchat beautifully colours in their characters before each, except Brendan, tells a ghost story based on local events. Starting with Jack, the men’s tales become progressively more real and closer to home before Valerie’s heartbreaking turn.
Very little of direct comfort or connection is ever said between any of them, but McPherson is a master at what is unsaid. Beautifully paced in the hands of an excellent cast, silences speak volumes. Banter and endless rounds of drink convey what men so often can not, Kate is wrapped in Jack’s arms.
Jack closes the night with a second story, this time a recollection of his lost love. Quietly, devastatingly delivered, it haunted me long after the curtain fell and they all disappeared back into the storm.
THE WEIR AT THE HAROLD PINTER THEATRE TO DECEMBER 8