‘The Weir,’ A Modern Classic,

 At The Little Theater

Town Players of Newtown will present the Connecticut premiere of Conor McPherson’s The Weir, a beautiful award-winning play hailed on both sides of the Atlantic as a modern classic.

The play is set in a small bar in contemporary rural Ireland. Mr McPherson has said it was inspired by visits to his grandfather, who used to “tell me stories. And then when you’re lying in bed in the pitch-black silence of the Irish countryside it’s easy for the imagination to run riot.”

Thus The Weir is full of ghost stories, as the bar’s regular customers pass an evening telling one another, and a woman newly arrived from Dublin, tales of fairies and hauntings. But the woman has ghosts of her own, and the play becomes what The London Guardian called “a spellbinder.”

Although tales of ghosts and fairies fill the script, make no mistake: this is most certainly not an evening of “little people” and quaint bedtime stories. The men drink, smoke and swear as they discuss the otherwise very ordinary lives they lead. Yet the play as it unfolds reveals the compassion and delicacy with which they deal with one another and with the haunted woman who comes to the village for solace.

The writing — lyric, earthy and vivid — shows Mr McPherson’s sensitive ear for the rhythms and idioms of Irish country speech. The story is equally perceptive about the ways in which humans survive the pain of living. The Times Literary Supplement noted Mr McPherson’s “gift for locating the greatest emotions in the smallest details.”

The Weir opens September 7 at The Little Theatre, on Orchard Hill Road in Newtown, and will continue Friday and Saturday evenings at 8 pm through September 29. There will be a Sunday matinee on September 23 at 2 pm.

All tickets are $10. Call 270-9144 for reservations and directions.