rawlinson
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264. The Weir
by Conor McPherson
Play
1997
The Weir is a remarkable, Olivier winning play set entirely in a pub somewhere in rural Ireland, written by playwright and film director Conor McPherson. McPherson's play brought him both awards and acclaim. The play is about telling stories and the power of language, especially its power to let us hide from or face up to unpleasant events.
The play only has five characters. There's the barman, the shy but likeable Brendan, a talkative local mechanic named Jack, his introverted assistant, Jim, and a flashy former local boy turned estate agent and hotel owner, Finbar. Finbar has recently sold a house to a single young Dublin woman named Valerie and is giving her a tour of the scenery, including Brendan's pub. The men all try to charm Valerie and the conversation quickly turns to local legends and ghost stories, including that of a supposed fairy road that passes through Valerie's new home.
The relatively harmless first tale opens the floodgates and the stories gradually grow darker and more distressing and take in various aspects of the supernatural, moving from charming folk story to how the unknown can unsettle the most rational minded, to how even death can't stop some taboos, to a heartbreaking response to grief. The stories aren't just ghost stories for the sake of them, their content and their style are used to take us into the minds of the characters. McPherson also taps into one of horror's greatest strengths the ability to give voice to fears that people can't face in a realistic context. Finbar's story reveals every insecurity he hides behind flash, Valerie reveals the grief that drove her from the city, Jimmy's encounter could be seen as reflecting and distorting the sexuality of a middle-aged man still living with mother. But through all the haze and terror, the strongest emotion evoked by The Weir is loneliness, something perfectly illustrated in Jack's final tale, the one time where all hints of the supernatural are dropped.
One of the most important elements is the relationships between the characters, we believe the tense history between Jack and Finbar, the easy-going nature and joking of Jack, Jimmy and Brendan, and we feel how quickly they develop a protective nature towards Valerie, even though they all clearly fancy her. Valerie powers the play, bringing to the surface old resentments between two of the characters and exposing how people create stories to heal wounds or to hide from the world. Brendan is the only character without a specific story to tell, instead he listens and watches, a nice use of the traditional stereotype of the barman being the person there to unload your troubles, but the character is also given a deep sense of loneliness and melancholy.
The stories are peppered with odd events and McPherson demonstrates a great talent for taking the mundane and using it to unleash some of the most unsettling imagery imaginable. McPherson is a superlative writer of monologues with an amazing eye for detail, the simple idea of a child's fear of a man about to cross the road and what he'll do when he reaches her side is extraordinarily unsettling. If Valerie's story is the most upsetting, Jim's is the one that eats away inside you, like all the best ghost stories. It's a fever-ridden tale of digging a grave and being interrupted by someone who might just be a ghost, but who certainly displays the worst of humanity. It's a hazy tale, one that mixes the cliches of old-fashioned spook stories (digging a grave in a lonely rural churchyard) with one of the true horrors of modern life.
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ORIGINAL: matty_b
I would plough my way through MonsterCat 
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ORIGINAL: matty_b
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