Respond or Else: Conor McPherson’s The Weir at the Donmar Warehouse

Eamonn Jordan

For anyone sitting in the auditorium of the Donmar Warehouse in London on 2 May 2013 for the first major London revival of Conor McPherson’s The Weir, by Josie Rourke, since its premiere at the Royal Court in 1997,⁶²⁸ there are lots of prior questions, heightened expectations, feelings of enthusiasm and also some anxieties.⁶²⁹ I also have in mind an awareness of W.B. Worthen’s question, ‘What are dramatic performances performances of?’⁶³⁰ Worthen’s response is to say that ‘The text is absorbed into the multifarious verbal and non-verbal discourses of theatrical production, transformed into an entirely incommensurable thing, an event.’⁶³¹ So in that absorption and transformation, Worthen wonders, ‘How can dramatic performance be conceived not as the performance of the text but as an act of iteration, an utterance, a surrogate standing in that positions, uses, signifies the text within the citational practices of performance’?⁶³²

In terms of critical response here is a parallel question that builds on from Worthen’s: ‘What is a performance analysis an analysis of’? This paper will illustrate the variables that shape my responses. By this performance at the Donmar Warehouse I presumed I would be reminded of certain issues central to the text and to be engaged by what I may have ignored or missed out on in my previous distillations of this play’s dramaturgy and in my processing of prior performance experiences. More broadly, I also hoped to upgrade and re-invigorate my own thinking about this play, as I accept that I am a somewhat different person to the one who published first about it in 2004.⁶³³ I also wished to investigate if there were things that Rourke’s production did not unduly emphasize, but were issues I had previously prioritized and maybe even had over-estimated their significances in my own reflections and contextualisations. Additionally, might there be issues that are potentially repressed within the current mise-en-scène? I also wanted to consider how the performance processed some of the theoretical propositions that I had in mind in relation to masculinity, femininity, and the significances of narrative and pastoral spaces in terms of this work. I also wished to think through some of the more recent academic commentary which positioned The Weir far more in relation to Ireland’s Celtic Tiger economic boom than I myself had previously acknowledged.⁶³⁴

As a consequence I am conscious that I want my responses to Rourke’s production not to be a comparison with other productions that I had seen, and by calling attention to various interdigiting factors, I would like it to be more than simply a response to a performance. This is more about the interface between critical frameworks and my own scholarship, a range of research ideas and my own experiences, expectations, and positive attitude to McPherson’s body of work more generally. I am alert to the fact that I would intuitively resist negative readings of masculinity in his work and of either the monologue form or his quasi-naturalist instincts, however much he accommodates the supernatural in such stage environments. Even amongst the best of recent scholarship on Irish theatre, much of it is overly dependent on or utterly blind-sighted by an obsessive impulse towards theoretical framing, to such an extent that text and performance seem to be merely incidental or irrelevant aspects. I want also to shy away from that sort of critical positioning, believing firmly in the need to ground arguments in precise detail and clear cut, unspeculative evidence.

During the performance, I only record in my notebook essential details, trusting the rest to my memory. I will also study the stage design in detail before and after the performance. Finally, I want to respond to the substances and absences of this performance in ways that are hopefully nuanced, open and insightful, whilst ultimately accepting that many of these responses are inflected and determined by my own prior associations with and attitudes towards the play. The challenge in many ways is summed up by Bruce McConachie’s term ‘cognitive multitasking’.⁶³⁵ And my performance analysis will be a form of critical ‘unmasking’, recognizing that an act of criticism is not simply a response, but is overlain with many diverse inputs, competencies, expectations and knowledge, as already suggested.

Through the Bottom of a Glass

Fictionalized rural Irish spaces are often associated with beauty, isolation, history, with pre-lapsarian fantasies, with the exploitative practices of landlords, with pagan or Christian religion, with hardship, exile and a nostalgia for things long past. Tom Scutt’s elaborate and highly detailed design goes a long way towards setting and maintaining the atmosphere and mood of the piece. In the very intimate 300 seat Donmar Warehouse space, the bar/pub environment fills the whole performance environment. In Scutt’s design there are exposed wooden beams overhead and the floor is tiled rather than carpeted. (This is a particularly important detail according to the stage designer, who notes how the floor is tiled so ‘that the guys in the pub sense that the sound of Dervla [Kirwan as Valerie] is very different to the shuffle’ of Brian Cox’s Jack.)⁶³⁶ Also, there is a somewhat visible small back room which is full of clutter. Downstage right there is a stove where peat is burned and its smell suffuses the theatre space, without it being overwhelming or intrusive. Its mix and match furniture pieces form clusters of tables and chairs, and these offer a number of different drinking areas where the characters can congregate and also conjure distinct narrative spaces within the overall mise-en-scène. This layout of the furnishings also makes it possible for the characters to rotate regularly between these clusters of spaces. Such fluidity avoids any sense of a static or restrained performance sensibility.

Board games, a fire extinguisher, a box to collect money for religious missionaries, an electric fan, a bird cage and postcards all clutter the space. Behind the bar there is a calendar displaying April 1997. The back wall and centre stage serving area of the bar has a limited range of beer taps and alcoholic spirits on its shelves. Bacon fries, crisps, peanuts, and a small amount of domestic provisions are other design objects that define the characteristics of the space. (It seems as if its proprietor knows well the range and restricted tastes of his customers.) Additionally, an uneven range of drinking glasses compliments the seeming functionality and randomness of the other objects in the performance space.

In this production Ian Dickinson’s subtle soundscape opts not for the boisterous windy conditions that are often very prominent in other productions of the work, but instead settles for something subtler and more gently evocative. Clearly, it is a world shaped by the rhythms of nature. These aural and scenographic specificities relate to, integrate with and accommodate Neil Austin’s lighting design, whose primary use of golden and amber colours assist in making the atmosphere both one of warmth, welcome and potential foreboding. Also in many instances shadows are created as if to suggest that this is almost a spectral space, haunted as much by the associations, memories and losses implicit in the old photographs that adorn the walls, by the lingering energies of the pub’s nightly customers, and by the moods and sensibilities of regularly narrated ghost stories. One could make out the details of some of the old photos on the walls, but others are not so clear. On these photos Rhona Trench notes:

‘the ruined Abbey’ is probably the remains of Jamestown Abbey—a Franciscan friary of the convent of the Friars’ Minor from the seventeenth century, of ‘the people posing near the ESB weir,’ refers to the modern ESB weir at Jamestown built in 1951, which controls the flow of water levels at that part of the river Shannon and which generates electric power, and ‘a town in an alcove with mountains around it’ which might be Drumshanbo, Co. Leitrim, surrounded by Sliabh an Iarainn which guards the south-eastern shore of Lough Allen, and the Arigna mountains. What the images capture have nothing to do with us, the audience, in terms of the original meaning of the events that surrounded them when they were taken. Instead, the audience will look at them and, based on their own lives, will infer meaning to them.⁶³⁷

Both the public and the private nature of these mementos illustrate the intermeshing of the domestic and the communal, the private and the collective to be found in this run-down bar that needs both de-cluttering and re-furbishing. Evoked by his design is a rural, isolated world caught between the general fantasy of sanctuary often associated with imagined west of Ireland spaces and the projected fantasies of metropolitan audiences as to what such pub environments suggest. As Nicholas Grene notes: ‘Ireland is always available as a site for pastoral, in its greenness, its littleness, its location as the offshore-island alternative to the major metropolitan societies of Britain or America.’⁶³⁸ Grene articulates the alignment of the pastoral with the ‘archaic, traditional and originary’, ‘wholesome jollity’ and ‘harmony with nature’. He adds it is a space ‘marked by quaintness, the charm, the lyrical otherness of Hiberno-English’.⁶³⁹ (See also Terry Gifford’s work.)⁶⁴⁰

Equally the play’s pastoral comforting sensibility couples with the general public’s familiarity with commercially designed, fey often kitsch Irish pubs that are to be found in many cities around the globe, where Irishness is enacted, transacted and substituted in an endless variety of ways. P.J. Mathews notes: ‘Ironically, at the very moment in which the rural Irish pub was being replicated in abundance around the world, the same globalizing forces that promoted its popularity abroad were threatening the original of the species at home.’⁶⁴¹ Here in this play, Brendan’s pub/bar serves as a symbol of a displaced home place, as centre for community interaction, as a hub for the sharing of information, and as a place to pass the time, drink and perhaps get inebriated. The pub bears the burden of uncertain communal memory, with the photographs on the walls stabilizing some of the memories of the past. Rather than being naturalistic, expressionistic or impressionistic, Scutt’s scenography and Dickinson’s lighting, and Austin’s sound designs are notable for an intense level of detail, but the stage environment is established in ways that do not necessarily suggest a desire to embrace fully the notion of authenticity.

That said, plays set in such rural backwaters have faced strong criticism. Declan Hughes has voiced the most trenchant opinions, arguing that he ‘could live a long and happy life without seeing another play set in a Connemara kitchen, or a country pub’. Hughes expresses his tiredness with work where there is an assumption of homogeneity, ‘where everyone talks and thinks the same and holds values in common’. He even goes so far as to suggest that the village ‘no longer signifies, doesn’t resonate any more’ on a mythological level. For him it is the ‘spaces between cities’ that carry such resonances, and stories that matter.⁶⁴² Clearly, McPherson draws on specific locations, yet also has the need to blur or disorientate things just a little. It is a heterotopic space in a Foucaultian sense.⁶⁴³

Acting the Part

With the exception of Brian Cox (Jack), Rourke uses four Irish actors, Risteárd Cooper (Finbar), Dervla Kirwan (Valerie), Ardal O’Hanlon (Jim), and Peter McDonald (Brendan).⁶⁴⁴ From the off, Cooper as the rapscallion Finbar, appears comfortable, confident, suave, entrepreneurial and well groomed. He is the local character who has made good, who now lives in the nearby town of Carrick-on-Shannon and is in the hotel, property and auctioneering businesses – which coincidentally were many of the sectors that expanded most and were worst hit by Ireland’s economic collapse in late 2007.⁶⁴⁵ Finbar claims to have a keen and speculative business sense or in his words ‘an eye for the gap’. He is not entirely self-made, as he inherits much of his wealth from ‘Big Finbar’s will’.⁶⁴⁶ According to Jack, Finbar’s accrued capital is based on a mean streak, something that is neither affirmed nor denied by the play’s dramaturgy. Finbar likes to display his wealth and intimidate others accordingly. As a married man with children, Finbar’s personal motives for bringing Valerie to this backwater pub are multiple, complex and perhaps a little dubious. His offer to introduce Valerie to her neighbours does suggest a certain generosity, but his chaperoning or parading of her can be seen as a form of one-up-manship, as the other male characters in the play are relatively poor, have no children, and lack the intimacies, supports, benefits, pleasures, joys, compromises, sacrifices, complications and obligations of relationships. Equally, there is also a sense, given the kudos accruing to his indigenity and local knowledge that he may somehow be trying to entwine himself with Valerie’s need to find comfort in rural isolation, and be identified or associated in some ways with the remoteness and sanctuary that she seemingly craves. In terms of status and allure, he can tick both the pastoral and urban or cosmopolitan boxes, even if it is small town, simultaneously and with ease. That said, Cooper’s Finbar is not cast as the sexual predator and repulsive alpha male that he could potentially be. (Interestingly, of the four male actors, Cooper is the only one without a beard.)

Kirwan’s Valerie is an outsider because of geography, background, and gender, and later maybe also because of the type of story she feels either free or compelled to tell in this predominantly male space: what is not made absolutely clear is which of these possibilities is the dominant one. Of the three actresses I have seen in the role, Kirwan demonstrates a serious uneasiness from the off, and, barely and convincingly disguises the events and impulses that have taken her to the west of Ireland, to leave her husband and family supports, to abandon Dublin and to purchase an isolated house in which she is determined to live alone. Despite that impulse towards isolation, she still finds herself in company, in this public house or liminal space that seems in some ways to be locked in a time warp, stuck in the 1950s or 1960s perhaps rather than being necessarily of her time. In many respects, the pub environment takes her outside of a recognizable time and out of a discernible space and into a different sensibility or rival consciousness. Kirwan embraces these various contradictory states of mind and surrenders her character to the potentials and consolations of this isolated, almost abandoned space.

Later the discovery that she has split from her husband, prompted by the unbearable grief of losing a daughter, Niamh, explains some of her early unease. Neither partner could protect, console nor bolster the other. It is a trauma that for her cannot be comforted by those who are close, familiar and proximate. Without an actor equipped to perform and acknowledge such emotional complexities, this play could struggle. To Kirwan’s credit she keeps these anxieties and grief ever present with incredible, subtle focus, even as she at times nervously and cautiously laughs off the inadequacies of the bar’s facilities – with no women’s toilet functioning, and no chilled white wine to hand – however ludicrous these absences and omissions may be in functioning of public houses in the Ireland of that time. She demonstrates a degree of tolerance and a lessening of expectation that makes her less intimidating for those around her. Later, Kirwan’s laughter becomes less self-conscious and less an expression of her politeness or cordiality: the nature of her laughter has a striking and notable evolution throughout Rourke’s production as it progresses to become fundamentally participative, but not necessarily gender subversive. When Kirwan moves between the discrete narrative or performance spaces of the other characters, she is almost like a spectator moving between locations in an intimate site-specific piece of work. Indeed her transgressive mobility is choreographed to challenge the vectors and dynamics of this space and its possibly and rudimentary oppressive dispositions. Later, when Valerie tells her own story, she is laying claim to her own distinctive narrative space, but it also rounds the play in ways that are unnerving, harrowing and uncomfortable for the other characters that witness her story. Her space by the stove, downstage right, is not only the dominant stage space, but it also becomes a shared, collective space, yet it is clearly not the alignment of the feminine with the hearth or home. By the play’s end it is the environment into which Brendan is drawn from his usual habitat that is from behind the bar.

Of the males, O’Hanlon’s Jim is consistently on edge, embarrassed, stammering, eager and a little fixated on Valerie’s presence, in ways that men that are not regularly in contact with the opposite sex can sometimes be. His passive qualities are echoed by the inexpensive polyester jumper, scruffy trousers and dirty boots that he wears, which of course contrast sharply with Finbar’s sophisticated, urbane, casual attire of cream jacket and trousers and brown leather shoes. O’Hanlon illustrates his character’s tacit understanding of his social status, and demonstrates a humility and a lack of resentment in the instance when the others skip over his turn to buy a round of drinks, which is of course an unspoken acknowledgement of his straightened financial circumstances.

Upon entering the empty pub, and seeing no bar person present, Cox’s Jack is at liberty to serve himself a drink, and then unhurriedly, casually and confidently does so. Initially, the beer tap does not work, and Cox incorporates a great deal of humorous stage business into his performance, coaxing audience laughter. With an exorbitant gesture, Cox then checks a price list, opens the till and pays for his alcohol. These moments of self-service and payment not only set out the communal and pastoral tones of this play, but, also allow the spectator to grasp instantly some of the functional dynamics of this rural micro-community, mainly because Jack’s actions are so much at odds with all customer transactions in 2013 in pubs around the Donmar Warehouse close by to Covent Garden, as they would have been in 1997 in the vicinity of Sloane Square when the play premiered there at the Royal Court. Indeed, there would have been very few public houses in Ireland even in the 1990s where such a transaction could have taken place. But actions like this did and still do happen in some rural communities in their shops and public houses. However, it would be naive to think that it is a communal sensibility based simply on collective trust, something innately noble, or a marker of mutual respect, as it may also have as much to do with mutual fear, the prospect of retaliation or the reporting of dishonesty to others and reputational damage that would ensue. Regardless, it still flags a form of trust that is made strange by its fundamental difference from liberal capitalist business norms, where transactions with customers are predominantly shaped by security tags, surveillance, suspicion, and regulation, therefore a fundamental absence of trust.

This predominant sensibility of mutuality is also evident throughout the play in the free drink that Brendan later hands over to Jim on his way home, and in the fact that Brendan’s attitude towards his business seems to be based more on companionship and conversation and less about a desire to make a significant profit from the drinking habits of his customers. It is not so much that it is not-for-profit business per se, but Brendan’s farming activities appear to be his main source of income. When the pub is busy with tourists, Brendan is disgruntled rather than excited by the additional revenues.

While there is something romantically civil, even innocent or naive in the customer arrangement which opens the play, it does not necessarily mean that the banter which follows is mutually cooperative, free from the pulling of rank or is naively romantic or utopian in perspective. The ensemble convincingly handles the edgy, jibing and competitive small talk that is evident throughout the early and relatively convivial introductions, but when it is time for the characters to avoid conversation or contentious debate, they do what Irish people in pubs often do best – and I hope I have not been too reductive here – that is tell stories. Now the play’s register shifts, repelling the assumptions and conventions of naturalism and deliberately springboarding into another dimension, where the real, the imagined and the supernatural interface.

Finbar encourages Jack to tell a ghost story about fairies, fairy roads and encounters with the uncanny that occurred in Maura Nealon’s old-home and Valerie’s new abode. Surprisingly, in Cox’s delivery there are very few brief pauses or delicate hesitations and there is often a slightly strained uncertainty in the telling, but what is especially striking is the speed at which he delivers the story. There is also no clear sense as to why he is telling this story in the first place. Cox’s performance has a routinized, almost aggressive bluster to it, and his Jack is generally more of a trickster-like figure: different from how one might imagine him to be, his is a stronger, more assured, even a predatorial presence. Cox’s Jack seems comfortable as rival to the younger men in the room, despite the fact that Cooper’s Finbar, O’Hanlon’s Jim and McDonald’s Brendan are far closer in age to Kirwan’s Valerie.⁶⁴⁷ (My one criticism of Cox’s exceptional performance is that on the day I saw the production, his accent is initially all over the place, but after a minute or so, he grounds it so successfully that one does not think about his accent again.)

Kirwan’s Valerie remains relatively controlled, but modestly self-conscious throughout Jack’s first narrative. She appears most aware that the house at the centre of Jack’s story is the one that she has just purchased. The more the story progresses, Valerie is increasingly being reminded of her own paranormal encounters, whilst the males are effectively oblivious to the complex and fuller impact of Jack’s story on her. Equally perhaps, Finbar’s prompting of Jack to tell this story is not an innocent mistake: it is as if he wants Valerie to be a little unnerved by this story and her new surroundings. It also might be deduced that he may hope that Valerie might not want to be alone in her bed on this particular night. The way that Cooper scrutinizes Kirwan’s reactions to the opening story makes this interpretation plausible.

Jack’s initial narrative prompts Finbar to tell another story that involves the macabre, ghosts, Ouija boards, during an evening of events that prompted his moving away from the locality. Again, it is narrated with that strange pace I mentioned earlier. It is not made clear as to whether or not Finbar’s motivation is to trump Jack, to put Valerie under additional pressure or that he truly believes in what he is saying. From a performance point of view, this is the right thing to do, that is, to keep ambivalence to the fore. Kirwan’s Valerie is further unnerved by Jim’s telling of a different type of story, about the supposed appearance of a dead man who requests to be buried not in his own grave but in that of a young girl’s. While the delivery remains at the same high tempo as that of the two previous stories, what now surprises is how emotionally intense O’Hanlon’s Jim becomes, as does his longing for Valerie’s attention.

A Shot in the Dark

If three out of the four male characters have had their narrative opportunity or performance turn, Valerie effectively demands the next shot, and it is then that Kirwan’s performance becomes even more impressive. Most surprising perhaps is the fact that Valerie’s narrative about the drowning of her daughter remains driven by the same pressured and speedy delivery mode as already mentioned in relation to the previous stories. This approach initially feels strange, even more than a little unnerving, in that it is out of sync with what most might expect to be the narrative rhythms of such sorts of deeply personal revelations, in terms of the emotions, intensities, silences, hesitations and tears, but her strange passion, almost a fixation, emerges through this very urgency. It becomes clear that the intention behind Rourke’s pacing of the narratives is to veer away from easy associations and expectations spectators may have with real and supernatural narratives, skewing a natural empathetic response in many respects. Kirwan’s performance is especially rigorous and accomplished in meeting such aspirations.

Throughout Kirwan’s narrative I was especially attentive, as I had previously written that given the many overlaps and consistencies between Valerie’s story and those that came before hers, it was possible to read her narrative as a ruse, as a clever deconstructive attack on the male characters’ struggles for self-definition and the hold that they had over both the space and the storytelling format itself.⁶⁴⁸ I made this argument based on the slight variation and repetition of many key words, names and concepts in her story that are in the previous three narratives. This was an idea inspired by McPherson’s general indebtedness to a trickster sensibility evident in David Mamet’s dramaturgy and approach to screen writing and by Bryan Singer’s The Usual Suspects (1995), where Kevin Spacey’s character Verbal Kint constructs a story based on fragments of details that come within his sight in a police station as he faces interrogation in the aftermath of a bloodbath on a ship. Comments by McPherson in a Preface to two of his plays about the conventions of telling stories in pubs substantiated that argument, as to whether or not something was true or fabricated did not matter so much on those occasions.⁶⁴⁹

Despite the skewed pacing, Kirwan’s narrative captures the kernel of the traumatic experience at the death of her daughter, with not too much by way of emphasis on that meta-theatrical dimension or on the trickster embellishments and indicators that I have previously identified. That said, it seems clear that Kirwan does give particular emphasis to certain key words that are common across the stories, as if to underscore the repetitions, but to what ends I cannot be sure. And although disconcerted, Kirwan does take a certain delight in trumping the stories told by the others. It leaves the male characters prompting each other to assuage her anxieties and scrambling to provide rational explanations for some of the incidents that she has experienced and accounted for. Rourke’s production particularly foregrounds the humiliation that the male characters variously appear to display in the aftermath of Valerie’s narrative. Further, it is as if the energy and conviction of her story effectively break up the gathering. Finbar is sent home alone, so to speak.

It is also telling that Kirwan’s character confidently exerts a growing influence over the space. Her narrative enables her to heighten her status, but not in a way that is fundamentally threatening to the others. Evidence of this is seen in how Jack encourages her to protect herself from their nonsense talk. Her story also prompts Jack’s telling of his own intimate story of love, lust, failure to commit and loss. It is at this point in the performance when Cox comes into his own. Firstly, Jack admits that the overwhelming sadness and humiliation he feels after the marriage ceremony of his exgirlfriend to a Dublin based policeman is utterly contrary to what he had expected to feel. Secondly, the consolation and generosity offered by a stranger, a bar man in a Dublin pub, stands out in his mind. Thirdly, while it is a ‘real’ story of sorts, it is also predominantly a ghost story, as he is haunted by his own cussedness, his own frailties, poor judgment and ultimately his lack of courage. Unlike in McPherson’s latest work The Night Alive (2013) where Uncle Maurice (Jim Norton in another McPherson role) expresses the idea that one may only get two or three chances in life to get things right, here in the instance of The Weir second chances are not plentiful, and in a way the paucity of lifetime opportunities additionally marks the work as both uncanny and outside time.

Jack’s story is delivered with great poignancy by Cox, but also with a little more aggression than Jim Norton brought to his performance at the Gate Theatre in 1998. With Norton I felt as if he was attempting to identify with Valerie’s loss, whereas with Cox there appears to be that empathy, but also it seems driven by a slender plea for Valerie to recognize him as an aging, but still sexually functional male. The details of him sleeping with his ex-girlfriend are laced with such a conviction. Jack’s mood veers towards self-pity, but it is quickly abandoned thanks to levity and self-awareness. Even if this shared moment marks a fundamental hurt in his life, it is steered both by distancing techniques and also by the framing of loss in terms of a broader cosmic insignificance.

Of course, the evening’s master of ceremonies has been McDonald’s Brendan, another lonesome and youngish enough bachelor. McDonald has a terrific comic ability to combine reticence, introverted vulnerability and self-conscious, playful emotion, and he is capable of delivering it in a throw-away fashion. Although Brendan has no story of any sort to tell, McDonald’s interactions throughout with Kirwan’s Valerie are impressively subtle, especially as the play concludes. As Valerie sits by the stove, Brendan moves over to join her. There is a hesitant and heightened sexual tension acknowledged between both characters. The tentative bond between them both at this moment is neither simplistic nor a soppy futuristic signalling of a happy-ever-after type scenario. As Rourke stages it, it is an encounter between them that is prompted by the courage to be open to the possibility of connection with others and not by a naive optimism. Out of the mire of debilitating consciousnesses and inhibiting, past-orientated narratives, it is now a drama tentatively affirming the present and a future with possibilities.

In one telling moment after Valerie kindly locates Brendan’s missing keys, the textual suggestiveness of such a gesture is clearly foregrounded by Kirwan’s flirtatious demeanour. Soon after McDonald is convincing in capturing his character’s now more relaxed mode of being, when talking carelessly about Valerie’s attractiveness to Finbar, stating: ‘He’ll be like a fly on a big pile of shite’.⁶⁵⁰ To McDonald’s credit he makes this unfortunate turn of phrase seem less like an expression of rudeness or frankness, and less again like an indication of a process of normalizing her objectivization, but more like him being less guarded and freer in her company. Alcohol helps in that regard. There is a certain charm and comfort in Brendan’s status as the beta to Finbar’s misguided aspirations to be the alpha male of the night’s gathering.

In the 1980s and 1990s in particular, it was in vogue to view the gender politics of any piece of work regarded as close to naturalism as being regressive, conformist, conventional and active in the circulation of patriarchal imperatives.⁶⁵¹ With the exception of Finbar, the general status, ‘honour, prestige’, ‘the right to command’ and the ‘material’ gains that R.W. Connell associates with the dividends of patriarchy that accrue to men are clearly not realized here in this play.⁶⁵² Anything but a trivial alignment of the male characters in the reproduction and dissemination of patriarchy seems like a reductive response to the work.⁶⁵³ In the relative circumstances of their lives, the dividends of patriarchy are almost notional to the likes of Jim and Jack. Valerie is the character that is most articulate, grounded and mobile and she can partake as an equal in the ‘metaphysical debate’ as well as having equal purchase on the imaginative/supernatural spheres.⁶⁵⁴

Helen Heusner Lojek notes of the dramatic space in this play that: ‘it is a warm, private space in which individuals can and do come together, because of and regardless of exterior realities: a retreat separate from the world of work, a place where drinkers meet with a degree of equality that may not be found outside the bar.’⁶⁵⁵ And in many ways not only is this equality a temporary issue, but more importantly it functions in ways to contest the relatively fixed structures of inequality that are a global reality. In fact, what Rourke’s production clearly foregrounds is that the socially and politically marginalized is not just female specific, there is a strong class basis to it. The production does not mask the inequalities of elsewhere, rather it foregrounds them and also reveals the bias and romance that metropolitan centres always have had for that which is marginalized. In the pub space, there are male and female characters, unafraid of their status and differences as men and women, with different experiences, backgrounds and occupations, who gain some access to the potential dividends of interrelating and sharing.

Based on work by Richard Shweder and Jonathan Haidt, anthropologist Alan Fiske devised a taxonomy of relationality, which Steven Pinker alters slightly. Fiske’s model emphasizes ‘Communal Sharing’ – based on in-group loyalty, bonding and rituals of togetherness. It is a bonding based on care and protection. The second is ‘Authority Ranking’ – based on dominance, status, precedents, etc. The dominant figures take what they need and demand loyalty and in return they offer protection and assurances. The third model is ‘Equality Matching,’ something which ‘embraces tit-for-tat reciprocity and other schemes to divide resources’ as equitably and as fairly as possible. Fiske’s final relational model is ‘Market Pricing,’ and this is about money, and financial value, and is not nearly as universal.⁶⁵⁶ Thus Pinker substitutes the term ‘Rational-Legal’ as his final model.⁶⁵⁷ This taxonomy thus provides a ‘grammar for social norms’.⁶⁵⁸ To be a ‘socially competent member of a culture is to have assimilated a large set of these norms’.⁶⁵⁹

In a different publication, Pinker reminds us that in evolutionary terms the ‘Rational-legal’ or capitalism model is a relatively new one,⁶⁶⁰ With his not-for-profit pub and with the emphasis given to communal sharing throughout this play, McPherson brings on board forms of ‘reciprocal altruism’, a ‘logic of reciprocity’, even an ‘ethos of reciprocity’ to use Pinker’s evolutionary psychology terminology.⁶⁶¹ McPherson is effectively challenging the dominance of the liberal capitalist model, and suggests that there are other equally valid forms of relating.

In Rourke’s production, almost everything is as seamless and coherent as one would ideally want it to be. There are trivial exceptions. For instance, despite all of the great strengths that O’Hanlon possesses as a performer, including a wonderful illuminating presence on stage, plus an ability to reflexively lower status as the situation requires, at times, the stage seems like an unnatural, uncomfortable environment for him, particularly, when he does awkwardness awkwardly. The telling of his story is one of the few times that this does not appear to be the case, and maybe that is because he is obliged to be relatively still while delivering his narrative.⁶⁶² Additionally, although Cooper brings an endearing quality to his role as Finbar, in part Finbar is played more often to be laughed at, and this thus entices less a laughter of self or collective recognition on behalf of the spectator and more one of condescension towards this character.

Equally, Cooper’s Finbar is a fundamentally confused character, further befuddled by some of the choices made by him or for him in this production. That said, Cooper delivers his supernatural narrative with exceptionally uncanny inflections and with a distanced, glazed intensity. These critiques of the two performances are slight and do not amount to substantial production frailties. Indeed such flaws are utterly offset by the consistently astonishing performances delivered by Cox, Kirwan and McDonald.

By using multiple bar room tables around which to cluster figuratively her characters, by energizing the space with a great deal of physical action, Rourke extracts far more humour from the work than I remember from the other performances of this play that I have seen previously. This comedy is seen in either the exaggerated cantankerousness of Cox’s Jack’s self-defence mechanisms or in the gentle gestural comedy of the piece, evident in the instance when Brendan pours Valerie’s un-chilled white wine into a half-pint glass and fills it up to the brim.

In this production there is also a great alertness to the tragi-comic sensibility that drives dialectical character oppositions, that are not only between characters but are also played as tensions within characters: the simultaneities that exist between frailty and resilience, surrender and persistence, and between denial and obstinacy are cleverly incorporated, as each actor demonstrates complexities that are harmonized and counter-balanced by an array of rival impulses.

In the networks of relationships established between these characters, Rourke affirms a circularity rather than a linearity of time, and an inter-digitation of different sorts of spaces, namely fictional, personal, supernatural, contrived ones. It is not simply to wonder if a supernatural world exits, but it is more about what ‘shadows’ existence; an awareness of twin or multiple worlds to which dreamscapes can give one access. A drugged and sedated Valerie could imagine or hallucinate anything, including phone calls from her dead daughter. Jim also explains the supernatural through fever and an alcoholic haze. The thin line between the personal experience narrated and the supernatural is crossed with great regularity, often apologetically, but the frequency with which it happens proves the uncertainty and the need. There is also the comfort of stories. Richard Kearney suggests that ‘Telling stories is as basic to human beings as eating. More so, in fact, for while food makes us live, stories are what make our lives worth living. They are what make our condition human’.⁶⁶³ He adds that it is the art of storytelling that ‘gives us a shareable world’.⁶⁶⁴ In performing, articulating, listening and witnessing, the play’s narrative encounters mark out the need to give form and coherence to the chaos of being, and the performances in this production do likewise with a brilliant ease.

However, there are also further questions stoked by Enda Walsh’s query: ‘I’m defined by five stories to my brothers. I know they know me through these stories and I know my brother John through four stories, and that is enough for us … We’re blood, it’s enough for us, it is our church, our mass, our kitchen at home … But what if these stories are not real, if they are actually lies, or when do they stop being real?’⁶⁶⁵ This raises not only the extent of narrative fabrication, but that identities formatted on such narratives can result in all kinds of illusions and consequences for subjectivity. Across The Weir, some stories are accepted, rubbished, queried, and taken at face value for the embellishments therein. Brendan’s sisters may dine together in order to get a story straight before they meet him, local history can be an invention, and communal memories are sometimes held in focus only by photographs on the wall, and vague associations with them.

Classic Status

When given the type of treatment and commitment that it gets from Rourke’s direction, the designers, and her ensemble of actors, this production confirms The Weir’s classic status, and also affirms that responsive audiences, very positive critical responses by reviewers and those that handed out awards to this work’s first production in 1997 did get its significance and substance right. This wonderfully coherent production captures the banter, disguised intimidation, and regulated and faux aggression that are offset by bonhomie, and an openness and generosity of spirit. It is a theatrical world not so much saturated by stories but one situated betwixt and ‘between’ stories, to vary Hughes’s notion of in-betweenness. In the fundamental need to attest a story, to share it, and to witness it, the characters put themselves at the mercy of each other and at the mercy of an ensemble of relative strangers in the theatre, sitting and experiencing the potential of otherness.

McPherson clearly writes predominantly from a sensibility of fear and responses to it, while hovering relentlessly are issues of chaos, abandonment, inability to connect or fear of one’s own darker desires. It is a dramaturgy that offers a poetics of tentativeness and dis-ease, rather than straightforward abjection or terror, and serves to prioritize the small joys and playful humour in character interaction, rather than potentially satirical and aggressive engagements founded on subtextual currents of anger, rivalries, resistance and hostility. There remains ever-present the potential for ‘grace’⁶⁶⁶ and ‘communion’,⁶⁶⁷ for this provisional community of characters, imagined and consolidated as different. Rourke’s mise-en-scène matches this sensibility.

Bruce McConachie explains how in either real life or through experiencing a performance on stage our neurological responses or mirror neurons can be triggered, as we engage with genres, sounds, rhythms, moods, movements and emotions, visual and aural clues.⁶⁶⁸ Indeed such mirroring can be contagious for spectators. He identifies the significant impact of movement and sound on ‘spectatorial empathy’ in particular.⁶⁶⁹ One of the great strengths of The Weir is the huge range of emotions it churns over, and responses it entices. More importantly, it is often that which is denied, concealed, repressed, subtextual or kept at a distance is more important than what is displayed, which has the most impact on the responses and engagements of spectator. (See Steven Pinker for a counter argument on empathy and mirror neurons).⁶⁷⁰

While productions of any single dramatic text vary considerably, there are certain fundamentals, sequences, causalities and continuities that cannot be avoided, and in that way, acts of critical engagement cannot be served by the notion of surrogation at all. But criticism is an act of embodied engagement, investment of presence, shaped endlessly by attitudes, values, prejudice, distractedness, concentration, and random thoughts, where the essential and what is incidental run rival and simultaneous systems.⁶⁷¹ But I would not go so far as to suggest that it is some ‘incommensurable’ act of transformation, as Worthen sees the relationship between text and performance. While almost all critical responses to this play are different, most seem to be struggling to deal with the same issues such as place, money, narrative, time and gender. And from my own responses to this current performance, there is the realization just how much one brings of one’s own history and experiences, one’s conversations, one’s teaching, one’s writing, one’s reactions to critical commentary and how one’s responses to a performance are often shadowed by experiences of previous productions. There can be problems with being over-familiar with a work, less emotionally engaged, less easily instinctive and also perhaps overly anticipative in one’s responses.

Criticism is almost always an act of self-confrontation, of allowing the conscious and unconscious mind, memory and knowledge to interface creatively and imaginatively in the intensity of the moment. This article also illustrates how much Rourke’s production affirms, reinforces, tempers and challenges my own ideas about and previous responses to this play by McPherson.

Extract From: Irish Theatre International 3.1, 2014.

Cross Reference: McDonagh, McGuinness, Carr, Monologues.

See Also: The Theatre of Conor McPherson: ‘Right beside the Beyond’, edited by Lilian Chambers and Eamonn Jordan