Theater Review—

Town Players Offer A Bit Of Ireland With ‘The Weir’

By Julie Stern

I’ve never been to Ireland (outside of a 30-hour delay at International Airport at Limerick back when I was in college) but Conor McPherson’s play The Weir not only made me feel like I was there, but made me want to go back.

This is not to say that it’s the greatest play in the world, but it is being given a first class production by Newtown’s Town Players right now. A quintet of fine actors is being deftly guided by director Ruth Anne Baumgartner.

The Weir is set in a small rural pub in what had once been a farming area but is now fading into a backwater for those left behind when the economy failed. Tourists visit in the warmer months to hike and look at the scenery but in the early spring it is a lonely place, with only photographs on the wall to recapture happier times .

The title suggests melodrama (a weir is a dam that creates a deep, dark, impenetrable pool of water,  into which Victorian corpses sometimes disappeared). However while there is a weir in the neighborhood, its function is basically metaphorical: symbolizing the dammed up emotions that lie beneath the surface of the five characters who while away a stormy evening, drinking and swapping stories.

Three of the characters are locals. Damien Langan plays Jack, the clownish, wisecracking middle-aged bachelor who runs the small garage that had been his father’s, before the new highway bypassed the road where it stands. Alexander Kulcsar is his humble buddy, Jim, a general man of all work who lives with his elderly mother, and Collin Michael Kiernan is young Brendan, who has taken over the pub and house that once belonged to his parents.

Into the pub comes Finbar (played by Newtown regular Rob Pawlikowski) a visitor they don’t often see. Having inherited money and property from his father, Finbar prides himself on being more modern and successful than the others. He lives in town and presides over his own establishment, called The Arms, but he is here as a gallantry to Valerie, an attractive younger woman from Dublin, to whom he has recently rented a farm cottage nearby. Though he himself is a married man, Finbar has promised to take Valerie to the pub and introduce her to the locals.

The action of the play consists of the back and forth banter between the men, alternating sly digs at Finbar for his upward mobility with the trading of stories about personal encounters with ghosts. Part of this is the booze — they all drink so much beer in the course of the evening that their periodic trips through the back door to “the toilet” are probably genuine — and part of it is a desire to impress Valerie, especially as the cottage she has rented is one of the places where a ghost once visited. The mood is jaunty and teasing, with the men competing for Valerie’s attention, as she watches quietly from a corner bench.

Then, suddenly, something changes. Valerie, beautifully portrayed by Leslie Van Etten Broatch, is moved to confess some of her own story. For the first time she finds herself explaining why she has left Dublin to take up residence in this lonely cottage. For obvious reasons, what she says cannot be told here, but it is enough to change the tone of the evening, and prompt Jack to reveal his own inner demons.

Not a whole lot happens during the course of The Weir, except that people open up, and when their walls of silence are breached, and the pent up guilt and shame and fear released, a kind of catharsis takes place, and the possibility for healing is at last within reach.

This is not a play for children. For one thing, it’s 90 minutes with no intermission, and they’ll squirm through the talky parts. They will also be upset by the revelations at the end. However, for adults it is redolent with time and place and mood. Al Kulcsar’s lovingly detailed set, and the Irish music in the background, all contribute to the feeling that for an evening at least, you’ve been transported to Sligo.

(Town Players will continue to present The Weir on Friday and Saturday evenings through September 29 at The Little Theatre, on Orchard Hill Road in Newtown. Tickets are $10 each and can be reserved by calling 270-9144.

Director Ruth Anne Baumgartner reported a sold-out theater for last Friday’s opening night performance, and a “near sold-out” crowd the following night. Reservations are being encouraged.)