Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Before lockdown snatched it away in 2020, Conor McPherson’s superb version of Uncle Vanya was gathering fistfuls of admiring reviews. Now McPherson returns with his own response to Chekhov’s great play: a rich, funny, baggy family saga set in a rundown farmhouse in 1980s Ireland. And, appropriately, one of the prevailing themes of the new piece is unfinished business.
Watching it, it’s not necessary to know Vanya, but if you do it’s a bit like meeting a distant cousin. In twenty-something Billie and her older brother, Stephen, we see echoes of Chekhov’s estate manager Vanya and his niece Sonia. But the searing unrequited love story here goes to Lydia, their lovely, downtrodden sister-in-law (played with aching poignancy by Hannah Morrish) who has been supplanted in their brother Dermot’s affections by a younger woman.
Longing and disillusionment hang heavy on most characters, and, as with Chekhov’s drama, the arrival of further family members pulls the others’ lives into focus. So in walk Dermot, shaking everyone up with his midlife crisis, and Uncle Pierre (Seán McGinley), a former priest who has his own ramshackle agenda.
There are traces of Brian Friel and other great Irish dramatists here, too, and the play’s title comes from a Yeats poem. But the style is very much McPherson’s own: earthy realism flecked with folklore and religion. This farmhouse feels like a liminal space — just a few key items of furniture in Rae Smith’s design — and many of the characters sense, or reach for, something bigger to explain their unhappy state.
As with The Weir, McPherson’s early success, a fascination with the mysterious reveals deep psychological wounds. Lydia urges her brother-in-law to fetch her some water from a supposedly magic well, but what we see is the agony of a woman desperate to win back her husband’s love. When Pierre, who is blind, declares his intentions for the farm and apparently undergoes a miraculous transformation, it feels like a man spotting an opportunity for a new lease of life.
The drama (also directed by McPherson) spends much of the first two acts depicting the dilemmas, only to hit the rapids in act three and move on in act four. It makes for a packed drama and McPherson doesn’t quite pull all the threads together. But it’s best to roll with the pace, savour the pithy, witty dialogue, and relish the performances, which are excellent.
In a beautifully weighted ensemble, Chris O’Dowd is super as the loudly self-pitying Dermot, counterweighted by Brian Gleeson’s Stephen, heavy with years of ingrained disappointment. There’s a pin-sharp performance from Derbhle Crotty as Pierre’s housekeeper, Elizabeth. Best of all is Rosie Sheehy, outstanding as Billie, whose frankness makes her both vulnerable and insightful, and who is, like Chekhov’s Sonia, the anchor of the play.
It doesn’t all gel. But what it catches so well is the difficulty of change, the restlessness of human nature and the deep, nagging desire to find meaning in life.
★★★★☆
To June 14, oldvictheatre.com
Read the full article here