First staged in 1977, Living Quarters comes across now less as a play about the problems of an Irish soldier returned with heroic distinction from a United Nations posting overseas and more like another of Brian Friel's portraits of a family in disintegration. And, if it has not quite the depth of cobwebs over the portrait that his next play, Aristocrats (1979) has, it nonetheless seems sure to survive in the 20th-century canon of Irish dramatic literature.
Sir (a languidly superior stage-director played by Tony Flynn, determined to stick to the facts in the ledger he carries) has arranged for the Butler family and friends to reassemble theatrically to re-enact the return home of Comat Frank Butler after his success on foreign service. His daughter Helen (Cathy Belton) has arrived back from London for the occasion, divorced and unhappy. Her sister Miriam, obsessed with her children if not exactly dazzled by her courtclerk husband Charlie, is fussing hospitably about and young Tina (Eithne Woodcock) is the life and treasure of the family at home.
Waiting at home for the commandant's return is his young second wife Anna with whom he has lived for only 10 besotted days and from whom he has been parted for five months. His son Ben (Charlie Bonnar), with whom Anna has had an affair in his absence, turns up for Dad's big day, and there is Father Tom Carty (his amiable, alcoholic and ineffective friend - Des Nealon - the army chaplain who has served with him for years).
Sir insists that they all stick to the script of what happened at the time, but allows them asides to talk of what they think about what they remember and what it may mean.
The acting is good under Jason Byrne's deliberate direction in Johanna Connor's sunny but seedy setting, but it is uneven. Clive Geraghty (ironically cast as Sir in the original production) is just too affable to convey the icy egocentricity of Frank Butler that is required to carry the action to its melodramatic conclusion, and Mary O'Driscoll's Anna is too brittle and too self-consciously brave in her performance to be wholly persuasive of her calm and clear intention to emigrate to America.
But it remains an absorbing evening, well worth seeing and a timely confirmation that here is another Friel play that will last.
Until June 19th. Booking at (01) 878 7222.
