I have just asked McPherson, whose play The Weir is among several of his to have had a long through line of the supernatural, if he believes that events can happen in ways we don\u2019t understand.<\/p>\n
Like every question I put to him over the course of an hour or so, he considers it carefully, frowning unselfconsciously now and then. He is consistently thoughtful, taking time to pause between answers. He may have had decades of experience of being interviewed, but it\u2019s not a process he appears either to be jaded by or to take for granted. At one point he asks, with noticeable anxiety, \u201cWas that an okay answer?\u201d<\/p>\n
On the supernatural, he says, \u201cI think we live in a situation we can\u2019t understand, and that we know nothing really about \u2013 where we came from, why are we conscious, what does it mean to know you are alive and know that you will die? That is the context of our life, and there is no getting away from it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we fill our lives with lots of illusions and distractions and, hopefully, if you are lucky in life, pleasant experiences. The truth is, none of us know what is going on, whatsoever.\u201d<\/p>\n
He makes a connection between the lacunae of our understanding of the world and his work as a playwright.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe stage is a great metaphor for that: there is this pool of light in the darkness where something is happening. That\u2019s what life is like. As a playwright I am as interested in the darkness around the stage as I am in the pool of light. <\/p>\n
\u201cI think you are always trying to drag the darkness on to the stage somehow, because that\u2019s really what it\u2019s about. That\u2019s where the truth is somewhere, and we\u2019ll never know it.\u201d<\/p>\n
McPherson is 54. He was born in Dublin, where he still lives with his wife, the artist Fionnuala N\u00ed Chios\u00e1in, and their daughter. He has been working creatively and in theatre since 1992, both as a writer and as a director. Among his plays are This Lime Tree Bower, The Weir, Port Authority, The Night Alive and the musical Girl from the North Country<\/a>, based on Bob Dylan<\/a> songs. <\/p>\n He has also written screenplays and adapted several classics, such as Daphne du Maurier\u2019s The Birds, Chekhov\u2019s Uncle Vanya and a stage version of The Hunger Games. He wrote The Weir when he was 26. It opened at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 1997 and at once became a sensation, as he did.<\/p>\n McPherson almost didn\u2019t make it out of his 20s. In the midst of his astonishing success, he drank to excess. On February 22nd, 2001, the day Port Authority premiered at the Ambassadors Theatre in London, his pancreas ruptured. Instead of attending the opening night, he was battling with mortality at a London hospital, where he remained for several weeks. He has been sober ever since.<\/p>\n The Brightening Air, which premeried at the Old Vic in London last year, was his first new play for 12 years. It begins a run at the Gate this month. The play follows a starry revival<\/a> of The Weir at the 3Olympia in Dublin last year, when the Oscar nominee Brendan Gleeson<\/a> featured in the main role. Brian Cox<\/a>, who starred as Logan Roy in Succession, and who has won many acting awards, including an Emmy, a Golden Globe and two Baftas, was in the original productions of both Dublin Carol and St Nicholas.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s the mystery of great actors,\u201d McPherson says, talking about Gleeson and Cox in particular. \u201cThe layers that are there. There is some poetic depth of telepathic communication which is happening with really good actors. They are communicating not just with words but with some kind of instinctive transmission of sublingual things that we all seem to share and understand, and they can tap into that with such grace.\u201d<\/p>\n I always say to my daughter, \u2018Where you want to be in life is right in the middle, not too happy, not too sad\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n What is his process for writing a new play, such as The Brightening Air?<\/p>\n \u201cFor me a play usually comes from the unconscious in an image,\u201d he says. \u201cOf some people in a room, usually. Over time, if that the image or feeling persists, it expands. <\/p>\n \u201cI always think it\u2019s like the stick that they use for candyfloss in the funfair. There is nothing there, and you just put it into this spinning sort of container, and gradually you see all these little wisps of something attaching to it. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a bit like that for me. I tend to think about something for a long time, just making little notes about it, what it could be, and allowing it to emerge from the unconscious, really, usually when I am doing something else. Then eventually, when you have got enough notes, you might start putting some shape on a first draft.\u201d<\/p>\n McPherson writes longhand and on his computer. He does the early notes on paper. The skeleton of a draft emerges after 20 or 30 pages. \u201cAnd then, once you have a first draft, you can work on it in a more office-hours way. You can go at it and spend a lot longer rewriting it. So it\u2019s like that for me, very gradual in that way. <\/p>\n \u201cI think one of the reasons why I write in those little bursts on a first draft is to keep the energy spontaneous. You want a little bit of chaos at the heart of it.\u201d<\/p>\n It sounds obvious, but, no matter how naturalistic a play is, actors never speak on stage the way people do in their ordinary lives. Their words have to carry weight and suggestion and complexities; to be, in a sense, the opposite of literal.<\/p>\n \u201cYou have to be good at writing things in the way that actors can launch the words,\u201d McPherson says. \u201cThat also speaks to the collaborative nature of the work, in the sense that all you are ever really doing is half the work, because you are trying to create the spaces to say the things that aren\u2019t said. You are trying to create space for subtext all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n The themes in McPherson\u2019s work have included loneliness, broken relationships, regret and grief, all spun together in his bittersweet cotton-candy confection of masterful storytelling and elements of the supernatural.<\/p>\n McPherson studied philosophy at college, and its influence is watermarked through his work. I ask about his thoughts on that perpetually elusive state happiness.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s about finding balance in life,\u201d he says. \u201cBeing busy but not too busy. Having something to look forward to but that\u2019s not too unsettling. That\u2019s what it is about. Happiness is an ongoing process. Keeping the balance.<\/p>\n \u201cI always say to my daughter, \u2018Where you want to be in life is right in the middle, not too happy, not too sad.\u2019 That\u2019s where nature likes everything to be, in balance. And if you have the luck to be in that place where everything is not too one way or the other, that\u2019s great.\u201d<\/p>\n This theory, McPherson says, is \u201cAristotle\u2019s description of happiness, which is, as it has come to be known in English, the happy medium. Everything has to be in the right balance. You have to be brave but not reckless. You need to be ambitious but not evil. You need to be kind but not a walkover. If you find the happy medium in all those virtues, you describe that as happiness.\u201d<\/p>\n McPherson now directs a lot of his own work. This might seem to give a playwright more control, but, as he points out, \u201cThere are so many steps where a play can go wrong. First of all, you\u2019re trying to write it, and you can go wrong there. Then, when it\u2019s finished, you\u2019ve got to try and get it on somewhere, and that can all go wrong. And then you\u2019ve got to cast it, and you\u2019ve got to get that right. Then you\u2019ve got rehearsals, and you\u2019ve got to figure all of that out. Then you\u2019re still only halfway up the mountain.<\/p>\n \u201cThe first preview, when you have an audience, is when you start to actually understand how the thing works. It is a process full of potential calamity. But I think that\u2019s also what gives it its power: if you can get all those things going, then it can really fly.\u201d<\/p>\n Among the audiences are always the critics. What is McPherson\u2019s take on reviews, 30 years or more in?<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I was younger I probably paid attention to them, because you lived and died by them, really, so you\u2019d worry about them. And you want them to be good. Then, over the years, you develop scar tissue. <\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t quite worry about them quite so much now. I\u2019ve had, for the same play\u201d \u2013 The Night Alive \u2013 \u201cand the same production on the same day, a five-star review and a one-star review. What can you do? You\u2019ve got to trust in the work.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat you don\u2019t want is the three-star reviews. You\u2019d nearly be better off getting absolutely hammered, because at least you\u2019re getting some kind of reaction. The three-star review? Ah God, that\u2019s a lot of work for a shrug. A shrug of indifference.\u201d<\/p>\n Neither of us mentions it, but we\u2019re both aware that The Brightening Air received three stars from The Guardian in April last year for its run at the Old Vic.<\/p>\n Earlier this year McPherson began to make a film of The Weir in Co Wicklow, with the cast from last year\u2019s revival in Dublin and London. He\u2019s now editing it. It doesn\u2019t have a release date yet, but it\u2019s due to be in cinemas. \u201cKate McCullough, who was director of cinematography on An Cail\u00edn Ci\u00fain<\/a>, which I was a big fan of, is involved.\u201d<\/p>\n McPherson\u2019s adaptation of The Cherry Orchard is due to open in London in October, at the Harold Pinter Theatre, starring Kristin Scott Thomas<\/a>. It\u2019s being directed by Ian Rickson, who also directed McPherson\u2019s lauded adaptation of Uncle Vanya in 2020. <\/p>\n The playwright and the director go back a long way: Rickson also directed the first production of The Weir.<\/p>\n As for The Brightening Air<\/a>, five of the original London cast \u2013 Chris O\u2019Dowd<\/a>, Derbhle Crotty<\/a>, Brian Gleeson<\/a>, Se\u00e1n McGinley<\/a> and Aisling Kearns \u2013 are returning for the Dublin run. They\u2019re being joined by three new cast members, Peter Corboy<\/a>, Kate Gilmore<\/a> and Judith Roddy<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"Brendan](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/UNVWZ3G45NEPNFBDDZ2SA6S3MU.jpg\")
Brendan Gleeson in The Weir. Photograph: Rich Gilligan <\/p>\n\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/2ID3UE3TMFC3DHLTOSWIXJACXI.jpg\")
The Brightening Air: Rosie Sheehy, Brian Gleeson, Chris O’Dowd and Aisling Kearns in Conor McPherson’s play during its run at the Old Vic, in London. Photograph: Manuel Harlan <\/p>\n![\"Girl](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/OINPG7XOEQPMBWVOOJKMYWI7H4.jpg\")
Girl from the North Country: Conor McPherson with the cast of his musical outside the 3Olympia Theatre in Dublin in 2022. Photograph: Leon Farrell\/Photocall Ireland <\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/LVHIQUHVAFCR7N3S5X6JKPX3CU.JPG\")
The Brightening Air: Conor McPherson at the Gate Theatre in Dublin. Photograph: Bryan O\u2019Brien <\/p>\n