Theatre review: The Brightening Air

Playwright and director Conor McPherson recently received a massive tax bill - at least that's the most obvious explanation for the frantic flurry of activity he's got planned for this year, when he'll be writing new shows, directing some of his old ones and, to start with, doing both: His new play The Brightening Air gets its debut production at the Old Vic, with the playwright himself directing and, to be honest, not doing much to dissuade me from my general rule of thumb that this is A Bad Idea. With nods to Chekhov that are acknowledged when one character jokingly refers to another by a Russian patronymic, the play sees a family reunite a few times at a remote family home - in this case a dilapidated farmhouse in Ireland. Middle child Stephen (Brian Gleeson) lives there with his Nonspecifically Neurodivergent little sister Billie (Rosie Sheehy,) who finds as much comfort in the familiar place as she does in discussing her wide range of fixations.

Theatre review: Cold War

Well it was snowing as I made my way to the Almeida, and that fits one of the meanings of Conor McPherson (book) and Elvis Costello's (music) Cold War, whose characters are often to be found shivering in big coats. Another is the more familiar meaning of the term, as the doomed love story is adapted from Paweł Pawlikowski's film set over the first couple of decades of Russian-occupied Poland. Beginning in 1949, Wiktor (Luke Thallon) is a composer who's part of a team led by Kaczmarek (Elliot Levey,) who are going around Poland collecting traditional folk songs. Previously dismissed as insignificant peasant music, their connection to people working the land makes them ideal to be co-opted by the Communists as stirring anthems. Wiktor is there to help make new arrangements that fit the themes of industry and productivity, for a show that'll be toured around Poland and eventually the rest of the Eastern Bloc.

Theatre review: Uncle Vanya

I can never quite decide which, of the plays so bleak even Chekhov didn't try to pass them off as comedies, is the most gut-wrenching: On the one hand Three Sisters spends its three hours relentlessly, unforgivingly tearing every last vestige of hope from its title characters; on the other there's Uncle Vanya, whose meditations on mediocrity and wasted lives get many a knowing, sad laugh of recognition out of its audiences. After a couple of high-profile outings for the former last year, it's the turn of the latter and Ian Rickson's production at the Pinter manages a lot more moments of dark comedy, while still packing a devastating punch. Vanya (Toby Jones) has spent his life managing the country estate that used to belong to his family, but was given away as his sister's dowry when she married a celebrated academic. The sister has long since died, and Vanya and Nana (Anna Calder-Marshall) have pretty much raised her daughter Sonya (Aimee Lou Wood) themselves.

Theatre review: Girl From The North Country

If a Meat Loaf jukebox musical at the ENO seemed like the summer’s most eccentric bit of programming, how about a Bob Dylan jukebox musical at the Old Vic? Conor McPherson writes and directs Girl from the North Country, which I hadn’t initially planned to see but some very interesting casting convinced me otherwise. Cast mostly with actors-who-can-sing rather than predominantly musical theatre actors, I already knew the likes of Sheila Atim, Bronagh Gallagher, Jack Shalloo, Debbie Kurup, Michael Shaeffer and Karl Queensborough could sing, but there’s also a number of pleasant surprises in a show that, music aside, I didn’t quite know what to make of. Set in Depression-era Duluth, the story centres on a guest house run by Nick Laine (Ciarán Hinds,) whose wife Elizabeth (Shirley Henderson) has early-onset dementia, and whose main relief from the financial and personal pressures he faces is an affair with one of his guests, Mrs Neilsen (Kurup.)

Theatre review: The Nest

Unusually, all the Young Vic auditoria are in use at the moment, with the mid-sized Maria getting a couple of big-name creatives - Ian Rickson directs an adaptation by Conor McPherson, The Nest. The original is a 1970s environmental fable by Franz Xaver Kroetz, about a couple's attempts to make a home for their new son, regardless of the consequences. Martha (Caoilfhionn Dunne) is heavily pregnant and pretty sure her old job won't still be there for her after she gives birth. So her lorry driver husband Kurt (Laurence Kinlan) is taking as much overtime as he can manage, including a cash-in-hand job to dispose of what he's told is spoiled wine, which he doesn't see fit to question. The consequences end up coming back sooner and in a much more direct way than expected, and the couple are left trying to figure out if their family can survive the damage.

Theatre review: The Night Alive

Rounding off the latest invasion of Irish plays in London is Conor McPherson's newest work. The Night Alive follows the hit revival of his best-known play The Weir at the Donmar Warehouse, in a production directed by McPherson himself. Part character study, part grubby thriller, The Night Alive takes place in the back room of a house in Dublin, roughly kitted out into a filthy bedsit. He was once the owner of a reasonably successful company but it went down with the rest of the Irish economy, and now Tommy (Ciarán Hinds) scrapes a living as an odd-job man and dodgy wheeler-dealer. Estranged from his wife and children, Tommy lives in this flat in his uncle Maurice's (Jim Norton) house. His friend Doc (Michael McElhatton,) slow-witted but prone to the occasional profundity, sometimes works for him for peanuts, and frequently crashes at the flat when he has nowhere else to stay.

Theatre review: The Weir

The Donmar Warehouse is more or less being handed over to Conor McPherson for the summer, with the premiere of his new play coming up but first Josie Rourke's revival of the play often called his masterpiece, The Weir. We're in a remote part of Ireland in 1997, where Brendan (Big Favourite Round These Parts Peter McDonald) runs a tiny pub. In a couple of weeks' time it'll be overrun with German backpackers but for the time being Brendan's entire clientele are Jack (Brian Cox) and Jim (Ardal O'Hanlon,) the village's other two resident bachelors. With no wives or children the three have little to do every evening but get drunk together but tonight they have company: Local businessman Finbar (Risteárd Cooper) has been showing around a newcomer to the area, and his tour ends at Brendan's pub. When the attractive Valerie (Dervla Kirwan) arrives, the four men soon launch into colourful local tales to impress her.

Theatre review: The Dance of Death

My final show of 2012, and an alternative take on the idea of festive entertainment - very alternative, as we're off to an isolated Swedish island to spend some time with Strindberg. Titas Halder directs the latest Donmar Trafalgar show, The Dance of Death, for which Richard Kent's design turns Trafalgar Studio 2 into a particularly grim, filthy little shack in a military garrison. It used to be the prison, so the fact that it's been allocated to Edgar (Kevin R. McNally,) an ageing Captain, as living quarters, may offer some hint as to what the rest of the officers think of him. Certainly he doesn't have much good to say about them as they party next door - Edgar and his younger wife Alice (Indira Varma) are the only ones not invited. Almost 25 years into a marriage that doesn't appear to have had a single happy day, Edgar and Alice bicker and hiss at each other, looking forward to the release from each other that their eventual deaths will bring.

Theatre review: Port Authority

Conor McPherson's Port Authority shares a format with another Irish play I saw last year, Terminus: That of three monologues delivered in alternating sections. This time all three of the performers are men, of different ages. Kevin, (Andrew Nolan,) in his late teens or early twenties, has only just moved out of his parents' home, into a shared house whose other residents include the girl he's in love with. They're both seeing other people, and though at times there seems to be a spark between them, it looks unlikely they'll ever do anything about it. Dermot (Ardal O'Hanlon) is middle-aged, prone to drinking too much and rather contemptuous of his wife and all the weight she's put on. For reasons that elude him, he's been handed a huge promotion he's not qualified for. Sitting between the two in his motorised wheelchair is Joe (John Rogan.) He receives an unexpected package at his old people's home, which leads to reminiscences about a neighbour he once believed himself in love with, despite hardly knowing her.

McPherson's three stories are only very tenuously connected, though you can see the thematic similarities - there's a lot of regret here, often centred on the women they do end up with just as much as the ones that got away. While still the liveliest and cheeriest of them, Nolan's character may in some ways be the most tragic - though still at the start of his life, he's already making decisions that he knows he'll come to regret. As Kevin would put it, these three men share the same soul, and it's not a fighter's.

With plays structured in multiple storylines you're always looking for them to come together in some significant way. Port Authority's connections remain a bit vaguer than that (and the title's meaning eludes me) but this doesn't make for a disappointing end result. The individual stories are interesting enough, and the performers intense enough, that there's plenty to take from the evening. Director Tom Attenborough has kept all three actors sitting still for the whole thing, on Francesca Reidy's simple set of wooden palettes, but I didn't find it visually boring. Perhaps the amount of gesticulating, which I guess is indeed quite an Irish trait, helped with that. (Or maybe I just didn't mind looking at Nolan, who is a bit lovely.) Ian said he'd been trying to figure out why, despite being interested in all three narratives, he felt most invested in Dermot's, and that he realised it was because O'Hanlon was making a huge amount of eye contact. This is certainly very effective, although I will say we were in the front row, and he seemed to be looking at the front few rows almost constantly, so it may well be that people sitting further back didn't feel the same connection. Still, three excellent performances in a lyrical play that invites a certain amount of personal interpretation.

Port Authority by Conor McPherson is booking until the 18th of February at Southwark Playhouse's Vault.

Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes straight through.