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Before Lockdown snatched it in 2020, the superb version of Conor McPherson de Uncle VANYA gathered handles of admiration criticisms. Now McPherson returns with his own response to the big game of Tchekhov: a rich family saga, funny and Baggy which takes place in a dilapidated farm in Ireland in the 1980s. And, appropriately, one of the dominant themes of the new room is an unfinished company.
Watch it, it is not necessary to know VANYABut if you do it, it's a bit like meeting a distant cousin. In about twenty years, Billie and his older brother, Stephen, we see Echoes of the real estate director of Tchekhov, Vanya and his niece Sonia. But the love story that is not rewarded here goes to Lydia, their oppressed step sister (played with a painful hair by Hannah Morrish) which was supplanted in the affections of their brother Dermot by a younger woman.
Desire and disillusionment are hung on most characters and, as with the drama of Tchekhov, the arrival of new family members derives the lives of others. So, in Walk Dermot, shaking everyone with his quarantine crisis, and the Uncle Pierre (Seán McGinley), a former priest who has his own dilapidated program.
There are traces of Brian Friel and other great Irish playwrights here too, and the title of the play comes from a Yeats poem. But the style is very clean of McPherson: terreous realism of folklore and religion. This farm resembles a limited space – just a few key furniture items in the design of Rae Smith – and many characters feel, or reach something bigger to explain their unhappy state.
As with The damThe early success of McPherson, a fascination for the mysterious reveals deep psychological wounds. Lydia urges her brother-in-law to seek her water from a so-called magical well, but what we see is the agony of a desperate woman to win back the love of her husband. When Pierre, who is blind, declares his intentions for the farm and apparently undergoes a miraculous transformation, it looks like a man identifying an opportunity for a new breath.
The drama (also produced by McPherson) spends a large part of the first two acts representing the dilemmas, to strike the rapids in act three and take action four. This allows an excited drama and McPherson does not completely bring together all the wires. But it is preferable to ride with rhythm, to savor the pithy dialogue, full of mind and to enjoy performance, which are excellent.
In a magnificently weighted set, Chris O'Dowd is great as a dermot with a strong epitry, counter-nor by Stephen de Brian Gleeson, heavy with years of rooted disappointment. There is a Derbhle Crotty pin performance as a stoneman's cleaning lady, Elizabeth. The best of all is Rosie Sheehy, exceptional like Billie, whose franchise makes her both vulnerable and perceptive, and which is, like Sonia de Chekhov, the anchor of the room.
That's not gel. But what he catches so well is the difficulty of change, the agitation of human nature and deep and lancian desire to find a meaning in life.
★★★★ ☆
As of June 14, Oldvictheatre.com
