Johnston country at its richest

JENNIFER JOHNSTON'S new play (unveiled, appropriately enough, on All Souls Night) is about watching ghosts gather, about remembrance as a form of imprisonment and, above all, about lives lost in what might have seemed at the time the best of causes.

We discover Flora Dillon and Nellie Maher sitting outside the old family home in Co Wicklow, autumnal leaves under foot both literally and metaphorically. Flora has spent a long time, years ago, constrained in psychiatric care; like many of the constraints in her life, it was "for her own good". Nellie, once the young maidservant, is now the companion. Yet their roles have hardly changed since they were young, save that a mutually loving companionship has grown between them.

Flora is hearing the strains of "Lily Marlene" and a child crying and we learn that her father died at the battle of El Alamein.

Gradually, the memories materialise theatrically as the stage becomes populated with young Flora and her dearly loved and loving brother, Eddie, and young Nellie, who snoops on them because she cares about them and spends every Thursday at the local picture house. Remaining a ghost throughout whether the stage action is now or back in the Forties - is Mother, her life and the lives of her household distorted by grief: the grief of bereavement and maybe of something darker which was conceived in light and love.

The drama in the piece is more internal than obvious, and the acting (under Caroline Fitzgerald's warmly sensitive yet tightly disciplined direction) conveys it beautifully without once becoming over emotional. Ms Johnston juxtaposes past and present every bit as deftly as did Brian Friel - and with dancing and old music, too in Dancing at Lughnasa. But this nostalgic memory play is from a very different Irish culture than Donegal's Bunbeg, and is utterly true to its roots.

Stella McCusker plays the old Flora with every stiff lipped fibre she has in her being, yet exposes accurately all her desolation and her love. Pauline Flanagan's old Nellie is all mothering minder and loving tender, yet never without due reserve. Lisa Harding's young Flora is electrically alive as she romances with young Eddie (due soon to leave school and maybe to go the same war that killed their father) and Patrick Lennox has all the pretence of sophisticated suaveness that only a 17 year old can display as they dance to old foxtrots. Sile Nic Chonaonaigh's young Nellie has all the makings of old Nellie.

In Blaithin Sheerin's richly evocative setting of a Wicklow country house, in Anne Whittaker's perfect costumes for both periods, well lit by John Riddell, they provide an evening of utter absorption and great and sad enchantment. This is Johnston country at its richest. Not to be missed.