The Weir by Conor McPherson

THE WEIR by CONOR McPHERSON, playing at Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum Theatre, is a tantalising web of ghost stories, Irish faery-tales and real-life misery.

In this production directed by Amanda Gaughan, a quintet of Irish actors use their soft voices to tell a series of stories that have impacted on their lives to huge effect. There’s no plot as such, but there’s a wealth of story-telling to hold the audience attentive throughout the 100 minute straight-through performance.

Jack, the died in the wool local man, tells a tale involving Faeries. Like elephants, only smaller, they have their historic routes. If you build your house on one of them then it’s the house that’s in the wrong place not the faery traveller. Finbar, who saw the gaps and made money knows that  some people, often teenagers with their overly sensitive, hormone flushed perception, can see the dead. Call it coincidence to help you sleep, but it may drive the hardest headed man out of his habitat in search of company.

Jim, the odd job labourer met a ghost who would have been buried in a particular grave for a particular reason (I won’t give the spoiler). Jim had flu and a high temperature so maybe there was no ghost. And Valerie, the blow-in with her air of rigid control, has a human story unequalled in its horror by any of the supernatural ones.

And that brings us full circle to hear just why Jack never left the country-side. Presided over by the young barman, Brendan, the group bat their stories and memories to and fro. It’s a huge pleasure to listen to. Difficult human frailty wrapped in myth without the need for protagonist and antagonist. It’s a gem of a play. I recommend it.

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The Weir Run continues till 6th February

The Crucible 18/02 – 19/03

A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen adapted by Zinnie Harris

A Doll’s House is a play I’ve seen more than once and studied. It isn’t a happy work, but it does have a lot to tell us about the ways in which our best endeavours for the ones we love the most can blow up in our faces and cause life-long harm. This version by Zinnie Harris, staged by the Royal Lyceum Theatre and the National Theatre of Scotland, has lost none of the intense moral centre of Ibsen’s original.

Harris took the play out of the banking world and into the political one where trust is equally important. Trust is all the politician has to allow him (and they were him) to lead his flock by the even-handed use of power that can be frighteningly all-embracing. At the core of the work is the issue of whether wrong-doing is ever justified. Thomas tells the embattled Nora everyone always has choices. Do we? What kind of choices? Choices might be to not buy a small car for the country cottage so one can re-decorate the drawing room, but equally might be not to put the heating on because then you can’t buy food. Thomas says they would face consequences together and then when he has to is unable to see beyond what he would lose and falls into the myth Nora created to save him from the stigma of being known to suffer from mental paralysis. I had pneumonia, he says without pausing for breath.

Excellent performances by the cast kept the pace moving along and the audience quiet. Lucianne McEvoy as Christine and Brian McCardie as Kelman were a delight to watch. Amy Manson was an engaging Nora.

On a personal note, I was really pleased the pears used in the scene we bloggers were privileged to see  pre-opening, had been abandoned.

Run continues. Well worth your time.