The Weir at Harold Pinter Theatre, London
Astonishing to think that at the tender age of 70, the terrific Irish actor Brendan Gleeson is only now making his West End debut.
Best known on screen as Harry Potter‘s Mad-Eye Moody, it probably needed a bottle of something special to mark the occasion – and in Conor McPherson’s wistful Irish classic, The Weir, it’s not just special, it’s vintage.
The setting is a remote pub on the west coast of Ireland in 1996, just before the start of the tourist season and the arrival of ‘The Germans’.
Here, three local men and the barman, Brendan (Owen McDonnell, Grace’s wicked second husband in season two of Apple TV’s Bad Sisters), tell ghost stories on a wet, windy night as they vie for the attention of a young woman who’s moved from Dublin to their corner of the sticks.
Chief among them, with a ghoulish tale of a ‘fairy road’ that passes through her new home, is Gleeson’s character, Jack.
And in McPherson’s fine revival of the play, which previously starred Brian Cox, Gleeson is a craggy hillside of a man propping up the bar and having to settle for bottled Guinness because of a dysfunctional beer tap.
Brendan Gleeson (right) marks his West End debut in style in ‘The Weir’, writes Patrick Marmion
Kate Phillips (above) as the mysterious Dublin woman, Valerie, turns the evening on its head with an agonising tale of why she came out West in Conor McPherson’s show
He’s a rural colossus of yore, white shirt barely encompassing his girth, inside a subsiding black suit that was once an Irish standard.
Although his diction sometimes drifts into inaudibility, Gleeson is a natural for the enchanting poetry of McPherson’s Blarney, which hypnotises the audience with its murky mood and lilting rhythms.
Perched like a giant on a stool, Gleeson bats off the gadfly antics of small-time local businessman Finbar, who’s given twitchy, cheesy charm by Tom Vaughan-Lawlor.
He’s more on a level with Sean McGinley’s Jim, a quietly spooky barside wraith who orders shots of whisky, or ‘small ones’, and recalls an uncomfortable graveyard yarn.
All the while, McDonnell’s barman is a steady presence, fielding orders and ‘debating’ whether he’ll have a small one himself.
But Kate Phillips (Jane Seymour in Wolf Hall) as the mysterious Dublin woman, Valerie, turns the evening on its head with an agonising tale of why she came out West.
Almost 30 years after it premiered in 1997, it’s impressive how The Weir has stood the test of time. It catches an Ireland on the cusp of change, haunted by a mythic and painful past.
But the warmth of the laughter that rolls off the audience is remarkable. And what better actor to pop the cork on such intoxicating liquor than the inscrutable, bearlike Gleeson?
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Brendan Gleeson makes his West End debut in style: PATRICK MARMION reviews Conor McPherson’s ‘The Weir’ at Harold Pinter Theatre