Mixed Marriage

Lyric Theatre, Belfast ****

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past” – William Faulkner could have been speaking of Northern Ireland, and its cyclical compulsion to reawaken old grievances. Mixed Marriage, by Belfast-born playwright St John Ervine, was first performed at the Abbey in 1911, where it was lauded by this newspaper as “a justification of the existence of the Abbey theatre” – but it evokes a small, over-heated world of sectarian strife that remains just as familiar today.

It is east Belfast in 1907, and shipyard worker John Rainey – Orangeman, family man, man of the people – passionately supports the strike action against the city’s factory-owners for an extra penny an hour. For a time, class solidarity overcomes Rainey’s ingrained sectarian prejudice, and he stands alongside Catholic workers, calling for unity against the exploitative masters. But Rainey’s tentative foray into class action cannot withstand the shock of learning that his son, Hugh, plans to marry a young Catholic woman. Pain, rupture and chaos ensue as the play careers inevitably towards tragedy.

That’s not to suggest that Mixed Marriage lacks subtlety, insight or wit; it’s no drearily predictable “doomed love across the barricades” weepy. St John Ervine, who was a third cousin of the late PUP leader David Ervine, knew this complex place, and he knew its people. Director Jimmy Fay gives the play’s nuances room to breathe – there is a wealth of meaning in gesture and tone, and he is not afraid to allow silences to linger – while the cast offers some of the strongest performances I have seen on the Belfast stage for years.

Marty Maguire provides John Rainey with the red-faced bullishness and bigotry that Ervine’s protagonist demands, but there is tenderness, decency and compassion there, too. Mrs Rainey, John’s wife, a Juno-like voice of stoical sense and good cheer, and a sane counterpart to the blustering of the men, is perfectly judged by Katie Tumelty.

There is more than a touch of melodrama in the play’s final moments, but not enough to undermine the sharp sensitivity of the writing, or the prescience of its message.

Until February 23rd