“Aristocrats” at Irish Rep (Photo: Jeremy Daniel)
At the center of Brian Friel’s Aristocrats, now playing at the Irish Rep, are a number of looming absences. As a once grand family gathers for a wedding at a crumbling mansion in the Irish countryside, it is people (including some famous names) that are not stage that inform much of the action and have a strong hold over the characters who do appear in the flesh. With an outstanding cast, this revival of the 1979 play is perhaps even more poignant now that the world it depicts has completely disappeared.
The installation of a baby monitor at the beginning of the play immediately signals that there is much beyond the drawing room and garden on stage that will influence the members of the O’Donnell family. As the monitor crackles to life, we hear the contrasting sounds of soothing piano playing and anguished non-sequiturs from the family’s aging patriarch. The setting is Ballybeg Hall – the “big house” on the edge of the fictional Irish village where Friel situated many of his plays. The father is the former District Judge O’Donnell, the last in a long line of justices. Three of his daughters and his only son are preparing for their youngest sibling, Claire’s, wedding. As the countdown to the nuptials unfolds, the true nature of their family ties and fortunes are revealed.
The production forms part of the Irish Rep’s “Friel Project” a retrospective of Friel’s plays. Friel is sometimes described as the Irish Chekhov and later in his career he would write versions of some of Chekhov’s plays. Aristocrats has many Chekhovian overtones with its family facing both their fading fortunes on a large estate and the changing class dynamics of their society.
The glory days of Ballybeg Hall are recalled by Casimir, the son of the family, returned from Hamburg. The music being played by Claire has a Proustian effect on him, calling forth memories from his childhood when he claims some of the greats of Irish literature, including Yeats, were frequent guests. As subtly played by Tom Holcomb, the audience can guess that all may not be what it seems, and the rosy view of the past may in fact have been less idyllic. Casimir’s sister, Alice (Sarah Street in fine form), has arrived from London. Her memories will portray a very different version of the past and perhaps explain why she would prefer to drink whisky than engage in conversation with her husband, Eamon.
He is prepared to be more honest than his wife. In Tim Ruddy’s hands the role of descendant of a family retainer who marries up is a chippy mixture of bluntness and compassion. He sums up the real status of the family with the caustic remark that they are “existing only in their own concept of themselves”. Unlike some of the family, Eamon is happy to explain the social nuances to a visiting academic, Tom Hoffnung, whose presence is largely a device to allow for some explanatory background of the O’Donnell family’s standing in the community. Roger Dominic Casey handles the part with joviality, but unusually for Friel’s characters, this one seems a trifle forced and even excess to requirements of the action.
Meg Hennessy as Claire, the bride to be and Danielle Ryan as Judith, the long-suffering oldest sister and caretaker of the house and their father complete the siblings, and both deliver beautiful performances. While Colin Lane does a delightful turn as the doddering and largely silent Uncle George. The erosion of class stratification is further portrayed by Willie Diver, the handsome tenant farmer and, now, Judith’s lover. Under Charlotte Moore’s deft, unhurried direction, each part shines with time for the audience to absorb their individual stories.
While ostensibly together to celebrate a happy occasion, cracks emerge through the missing pieces. Another sister’s voice is heard on a cassette tape sent from her convent and, clearly, she is oblivious that her father is close to death. While the true nature of Casimir’s marriage seeps out through a number of fraught phone calls to Germany. All these absences conspire with the relentless march of progress to press in on and pull apart the O’Donnell family, at the same time reflecting how Ireland and the world beyond the walls of the Hall is changing.
Like the cassette tapes and rotary phone that propel some of the action, the world captured by Friel in Aristocrats is long gone. But as this production shows, our proclivity to create myths about ourselves, our families, and our “origin” stories is enduring.