There are obvious (and intentional) echoes of Chekhov in Conor McPerson’s new play, which he also directs at the Old Vic.
It is set in the 1980s in a decaying farmhouse in County Sligo. It is home to Stephen, trying to keep the place going, like Vanya in Uncle Vanya (of which McPherson made a 2020 adaptation), and provide a home for younger sister Billie, whom the family say is “not normal". Their elder brother, entrepreneur Dermot, who has a chain of cafés, is returning after long absence, and elderly uncle, blind priest Pierre, is also expected for a family sorting out that produces surprises.
McPherson’s production doesn’t start with a curtain rising but one falling, then a succession of gauzes and cloths descending and ascending: a foretaste of its multilayered texture, and Rae Smith’s design signals movement from scene to scene with multiple distant vistas with small silhouette figures that hint at past histories or another magic world.
Brian Gleeson makes a likeable Stephen but clearly wilting under the pressure; he’d like to get away from it, but what would happen to Billie? She lets the chickens loose, three times on mysterious trips into town she has been knocked down by lorries, but she sees things directly in black and white. Rosie Sheehy emphasises her plain-talking more than any oddity, sometimes giving her a harsh voice.
Chris O’Dowd’s Dermot is ebulliently self-centred; every noun gets an effing adjective. He arrives with nineteen-year-old Freya (Aisling Kearns), an employee, but presumably his current girlfriend, while estranged wife Lydia (Hannah Morrish) is there making sandwiches. Lydia is still very in love with him and seeks spring water magic to reclaim him in one strand of this family’s story.
Another strand is the plan that blind preacher Pierre has. McGinley delivers his almost demonic diatribe against the ecclesiastic authorities with great passion and handles a major plot twist in style.
Pierre turns up with his housekeeper Elizabeth (Derbhie Crotty), and another not actually family is farmhand Brendan (Eimhin Fitzgerald Doherty). They are outside the family infighting, which is screechingly noisy, sometimes physical and matched at one point by a violent thunderstorm that seems as much of the faery world as the magic water.
Don’t think whimsy: it's all part of life with its own reality, supported by solid performances from a fine cast. Sometimes I could have wished that their Sligo accents weren’t quite so authentic—I know my unaccustomed ears missed some things—but this is playing full of passion in a play that is heavily shadowed but with a lot of laughs too.