Conor McPherson’s rural Irish bar-room drama seeps into your bones. Almost 30 years since its first production, I can still recall the chill that came across Rae Smith’s snug set, hear the humorous sneer in the line “the Harp drinkers” and sense the despair beneath the banter.
McPherson’s aptitude for atmosphere was later deployed in his Bob Dylan musical Girl from the North Country, set during the Great Depression, and will be tested when he evokes the dystopian Panem for an immersive version of The Hunger Games. But first here is The Weir, back for another round, designed again by Smith and this time directed by McPherson in a revival of such exactness it appears effortless.
The headline star is Brendan Gleeson but The Weir is an ensemble: its characters are on different frequencies yet see each other for who they are. That goes for the locals as well as a stranger like Valerie, relocating from Dublin as a “blow-in” while literal gales whistle outside in Gregory Clarke’s sound design. Her arrival prompts a troubling exchange of tall tales, dreams, memories and confessions but McPherson judiciously uses humour to clear the air between them. Much like a weir, the effect is simultaneously of free flow and stillness.
Barnstorming … Tom Vaughan-Lawlor, right, with Seán McGinley in The Weir. Photograph: Rich Gilligan
To tell a story is to make yourself vulnerable. Each teller here has their own style but seeks reassurance from their listeners. With knotted brow, Gleeson’s Jack first unsteadily threads together a bit of local folklore but also gives the aching closer, a Krapp-like remembrance of romance unseized in youth that has dogged him daily since. It’s heightened by Gleeson’s age (he is 70, the character is written as in his 50s) and by coming at the end of a performance rich with quips (“That fella’d peel a banana in his pocket”) and perplexed grimaces (starting with a lovely bit of physical comedy with a bar tap).
Finbar is altogether more of a raconteur. Tom Vaughan-Lawlor plays him as equal parts theatrical showman and school-class showoff in a caffeinated, barnstorming performance that you initially fear will overwhelm the others – but proves irresistible. Each line comes with a lick of the lips, a pointed finger or a boxer’s footwork, yet Vaughan-Lawlor keenly reveals Finbar’s insecurities and sense of absence.
Cool and bemused … Kate Phillips as Valerie. Photograph: Rich Gilligan
Then there’s Jim, played by the wonderful Seán McGinley, also significantly older than his character was envisioned by McPherson. His lengthy grave-digging tale is all the more compelling coming from this sleepy-seeming onlooker who elsewhere can raise a laugh with the briefest of utterances. (Much humour comes in the play’s pregnant pauses, too.)
The only British actor in the cast is Kate Phillips, emphasising Valerie’s outsider status. She is coolly bemused by the men before delivering a painful account that shares unsettling similarities with the others: defenceless children, uncanny noises, altered states. Phillips makes clear that it’s a story Valerie is still getting used to telling, aware it will define her.
Owen McDonnell harbours heaviness as barkeeper Brendan, keeping himself busy with routines that bring a comfort akin to Finbar superstitiously preparing the stock for banquets at his businesses. Weddings and funerals are all part of the talk but it’s tiny day-to-day kindnesses that define these lives in a room dimly lit by Mark Henderson to evoke personal isolation and the blanket darkness of rural night.
You wouldn’t want to match them drink for drink but all five characters stay with you: it’s an endlessly rewarding evening that proves McPherson’s play is built to last.
At Harold Pinter theatre, London, until 6 December