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by Conor McPherson, directed by Jackie Maxwell

Canadian Stage, Bluma Appel Theatre, Toronto

November 16-December 9, 2000

“A Quiet Masterpiece”

After beginning its 2000-2001 season with three severely flawed productions in a row—“Shrew”, “Outrageous” and “Hysteria”—the Canadian Stage Company has finally come through with a fine if not insightful production of Conor McPherson’s Olivier Award-winning play “the Weir”.  Compared with Ian Rickson’s original production which played here as part of the du Maurier World Stage festival in 1998, the CanStage production misses some  key elements of the play.  Yet the fine acting of the cast still makes the play a moving experience.

McPherson’s play could hardly be simpler—five people gather in an Irish pub on a stormy evening.  Three of the four men tell ghost stories to give the one woman, new to the village, a taste of the folklore of the area.  They decide to stop for fear of frightening her until she tells a story more frightening than any of theirs.  In the original production it was clear from the start that the four men barely tolerated each other and felt no sense of community.  The oldest, Jack, was an embittered, unpleasant old man.  Jim, who still lives with his mum, was looked on with derision.  And both along with Brendan, the bartender, looked on the nouveau riche Finbar, owner of the town’s hotel, as an upstart and assume he has dishonorable intentions towards the woman, Valerie,  to whom he has sold property and has be escorting around the town. 

Jackie Maxwell, the director of the CanStage production, has played down all the tensions among the men that Ian Rickson had highlighted.  For her, the men’s continual derision of each other is just part of a hearty conviviality.  In directing the men that way, she misses one of the main points of the play.  In Rickson’s production all sense of community had been lost, each of the bachelors lived in isolation and the village was a place only touring “Germans” seemed to enjoy.  The group picture by “The Weir” over the fireplace shows how there was a sense of community in the past.  Valerie’s visit causes the men to share stories of the past and when she shares her very personal story  we felt a new community had been born.  By misinterpreting the jibes at the beginning, Maxwell fails to portray the great change that is meant to come over the group during the 90 minutes we see them.  In Rickson’s production, Valerie’s story draws forth a story from Jack, who up until then had been derisive and antisocial.  He tells her the story of his own false pride and loneliness.  When Jack is played as a likeable old codger from the beginning, this confession loses its force.

Despite losing a major part of the subtext of the play and with the subsequent narrowing of the range of characterization, McPherson’s play is so well written and so well played that the work still retains much of its power.  Premier among the actors id Barry MacGregor as Jack.  Though disallowed the major transformation in Rickson’s production and though contrary to the author’s intent, MacGregor is still excellent in playing Jack as a cantankerous geezer whose bluster  thinly veils a warm heart.  It’s good to see this fine actor in such a major role in Toronto.  John Jarvis as Finbar, Robert Persichini as Jim and Ann Baggley as Valerie  are all excellent in telling their various tales.  Jarvis lacks the hardened exterior that we would expect the local business success to have and which would make his story’s effect on him even more remarkable.  Persichini’s slightly benighted Jim makes his deadpan delivery of his story even more chilling.  After Persichini brought dead silence to the audience, Baggley had a hard act to follow, especially since her story is the climax of the play.  But she, too,  managed to  have the audience hang on her every word.  I wish she had maintained the emotion of the story right through to the end of the play, instead of switching out of it after Jack’s final story.  Oliver Becker is perfectly cast as Brendan the bartender, a sort of rational pillar for the troubled souls of the village to lean on.  His comic timing is also superb.

British designer Francis O’Connor’s unit set is one of the finest naturalist sets I’ve seen on the Bluma Appel stage, showing us a poorly maintained Irish pub, carefully broken down with stains and broken plaster with heavy beams leaving the room opens to the sky as are our highly realistic characters to the supernatural.  He is also responsible for the well-observed costumes. 

In the original production, once the lights were switched on in the pub they remained at the same intensity throughout the show until the bartender switched them off.  This was in full accordance with the naturalistic set and the fact that the play’s time and the stage time are identical.  Rickson’s point, with his fuller understanding of McPherson’s text, was to make the telling of the stories alone the source of the bonding between the group without recourse to theatrical effects.  Maxwell, however, misses this point and has lighting designer gradually lower the lights on the teller of a tale until there is virtually only a lit face in the darkness.  This is very effective but also contrary to the spirit of the text.  What is really inexcusable is Maxwell’s allowing sound designer Jamie George to add faint spooky voices during the telling of each tale.  Again, the stories need no reinforcement.  McPherson is interested in the power of words not stage technology.

Maxwell stepped in to replace Michael Langham in directing this co-production with the Manitoba Theatre Centre just two weeks before rehearsals were to begin.  Under the circumstances she has done a very creditable job.  The sense of a community being reborn may be missing, but by emphasizing the emotions involved in the stories Maxwell at least shows the female newcomer being accepted into the existing community and leaves the audience with the feeling of having seen a quiet masterpiece.

©Christopher Hoile

Photo: John Jarvis as Finbar. ©2000 CanStage.