Sarah Street, John Keating, Dan Butler, Johnny Hopkins, and Sean Gormley in The Weir. Photo: Carol Rosegg
To escape the New York summer heat, head to Irish Rep for the revival of Conor McPherson’s The Weir, set in an Irish bar on the proverbial dark and stormy night in winter. As bar regulars regale a newcomer with spine-tingling tales, the audience may experience a pleasant shiver. But as a darker story emerges, it’s clear that this play is not just about ghost stories, but also about the power of conversation in a warm-hearted community.
Written in 1997, The Weir captures a world that has almost completely disappeared. While rural pubs still exist across Ireland and appear in Instagram vignettes, they, like everything else, compete for attention with digital devices and social media. But before we all turned to our phones for fun, the lure of the pub for companionship was a feature of country life and, in McPherson’s telling, pubs performed a social service as entertainment, but also support an informal form of talk therapy.
The bar in question is remote, set high above a nearby town and the favorite haunt of local middle-aged bachelors Jack, played with gentle humor by Dan Butler, and Jim (a laconic John Keating). Their host is Brendan, the youngest and also unmarried. Johnny Hopkins brings the role a tender solicitousness that will be key to the tenor of the play. They soon fall to discussing the latest local news, the sale of a house that has long stood empty to a woman, a so-called “blow-in” from Dublin. The banter and the drinks flow as they speculate about another regular, Finbar, who has announced that he will be bringing the new owner to the bar to “introduce her to the natives.”
The well-worn bar with a Guinness tap and cozy wood-burning stove is a home away from home for the men. The “weir” of the title is a type of small dam and is a local landmark “to regulate the water for generating power for the area.” Old photos hanging in the pub commemorate the weir’s construction, with the men and their family members all featured in fading black and white shots. The verisimilitude is the work of scenic designer Charlie Corcoran.
Into their midst comes Finbar, the local big shot in a gaudy yellow suit and self-satisfied swagger in the hands of Sean Gormley. He has the newcomer, Valerie, in tow. Played by Sarah Street, the woman’s arrival changes the mood of the bar as the men awkwardly vie for her attention. They soon launch into some local stories with a whiff of the supernatural. Valerie listens, rapt, but at the end of one spooky tale comments about the area: “I imagine, though, it can get very quiet.” The men demur and Jack reassures her, “[T]here’s company all around.”
Further tales unfurl full of colorful local characters and possible communication with the afterlife, punctuated with humorous asides to keep it light. But the intimacy created by the warm welcome extended to Valerie will prompt two more emotionally fraught and revealing stories. Under Ciarán O’Reilly’s easygoing direction, it’s all delivered in a realistic flow that feels like an epic eavesdropping session in a pub. The four men have all known each other and each other’s stories for years and yet it takes a newcomer for them to broach some more sensitive topics. Valerie’s reason for moving to the countryside silences the men for a short while before they offer her non-judgmental empathy that is truly endearing.
We should all be so lucky to have a generous group of friends or acquaintances with whom to share life’s vagaries. The play serves as a fitting memorial to this easy familiarity that used to be the norm both in the countryside and cities, when people gathered to swap stories, to listen and to be heard.