An author, quite properly, will have empathy with each of his characters, be they saints, devils or somewhere in between. Perhaps it was this empathy that affected Brian Friel's direction of his most recent play when it was first staged in Dublin two years ago and some of the inherent drama between the characters was elided in the rhythms of the rich language. Under Benjamin Twist's direction, this new production in Belfast renders the play harder and harsher and significantly more dramatic than on its first outing. Even if some of the Friel rhythms are less evident, this is a more gripping evening of theatre with much stronger dramatic tensions between its characters.
Tom and Daisy Connolly have a 22-year-old daughter Bridget who is grievously mentally afflicted, visited in her dark basement room in hospital by Tom who retails his fantasies to her unresponsive mind. Meanwhile, back in their isolated rural home, young David Knight is going through Tom's literary archive to see if his masters, in their Texas University, might buy his manuscripts (as they did those of his more flamboyant writer-friend, Garret Fitzmaurice) and confer on Tom some much-needed money and academic recognition. Daisy, who is drinking progressively more gin at home, is not so sure about his needing the recognition because it might end the grinding uncertainty which seems to drive him.
The tensions are wound up during a picnic at which Knight is likely to give his verdict on the manuscripts. The "party" is attended by Daisy's mother Maggie, a retired doctor with crippling arthritis, her dapper husband Jack, an intermittent kleptomaniac and onetime cocktail pianist and dancer, and, of course, the Fitzmaurices, Garret and Grainne, who indulge in their customary acts of mutual humiliation. The acting by the women is superlative: Maggie Cronin's bright-eyed frail yet faithful Daisy has not quite slipped so far into alcohol that she has forgotten her determination or the music in which she had once showed such promise. Trudy Kelly is a rock of certainty and propriety as her stoical and equally determined mother. Rosaleen Pelan is vitality personified as the merrily unhappy Grainne, and Sarah Wilson the mute and troubled Bridget.
The men have better opportunities in the second half and each has his moment: Bernard Lloyd as the indeterminate Tom, Des Braiden as the dapper Jack with his "snakeskin" shoes, Christopher Whitehouse as Tom's more populist rival in the literary trade and David Howarth as the cool clean American agent and catalyst of the evening's drama. And this is an evening of rich, intelligent and moving drama not to be missed.
Runs until May 15th. Booking from: 01232 381081.
