Irish Heritage Theatre presents Conor McPherson’s The Weir

Like many works by McPherson, The Weir is framed in a meticulous representation of the normal world. Brendan runs a small pub as a side business to his farm. Jack and Jim are regulars, talking about changing the oil, the broken Guinness tap, the unusual wind blowing in from the north. The conversation is nothing exciting. There are long pauses as a cigarette is lit or a bottle cap is popped. No cell phones. Then Finbar, the local real estate agent, arrives with Valerie, a new resident he’s showing around the neighborhood. At first, Brendan and Jack are suspicious of Finbar’s intentions with the young single woman. She doesn’t help when she orders wine, of all things.

Striking the right tone

Brian Rock is Jack, the local mechanic with a lot of presence but not much going on at home. Oliver Donahue’s Jim, the town handyman, is pitch perfect as the quiet lad living with his mum and not much to look forward to. Bartenders like Aidan McDonald’s Brendan are frequently the adult in these fictional rooms, and McDonald’s performance strikes the right tone as a man feeling stuck while the locals and the summer tourists take turns running the conversations. Finbar, as portrayed by Rob Hargreaves, is a bit humorless, though perhaps more fatherly and less flashy than he’s been in other productions over the last 30 years. Which makes him less of the stereotype real estate agents have become.

It’s Valerie who brings in the tension. Kirsten Quinn gives a quiet, friendly performance, the lone woman in a room with three single men who are trying to impress her while hoping she’s not too much like her annoying escort, Finbar. She’s charmed and amused, even when they start bringing up fairies and spooky local legends. Jack is mortified, for her, that the conversation has taken such a boyish turn. But it encourages her to explain why she’s left Dublin and come to this remote town.

Where’s the wind?

Mecham’s direction emphasizes the mundane aspect of life in County Leitrim, but sometimes the undercurrent seems a little too under. Without giving too much away, once revelations start to come to the surface, everyone struggles to be compassionate adults and lower the tension, but it almost feels, in later moments, that they’ve forgotten the revelations entirely. The design reinforces this understatement. The set by AJ Klein looks incomplete; there is much use of the pub door, for instance, but there is no door. The beer taps are conspicuously not real, neither in shape nor tilt. For a show that references the wind throughout, we never hear it—the sound design by Jack Zaferes is barely there.

Alluding to loss

These days ghost stories are horror stories, but in folk tales they can also be a way of processing loss. The ghost stories here move from the standard to the saddest. But then there are other stories about people who moved away and personal mistakes remembered, which can be just as haunting. Either way, the ones who haunt us are just out of reach.

What starts as an evening of guys tolerating one another because they have to evolves into five people walking out at closing time looking forward to seeing each other next time, but some of the shifts seem to be there because that’s what the script requires, not what Mecham’s direction puts in place. While there are points in this production where it feels like the strength of the script is pulling it along, in the end it’s the actors who have their moments, perhaps because they come across as real people, not Broadway stars.

Rock has a moment near the end where he reveals something about Jack, a monologue that feels personal, and Brendan and Valerie just sit there, around the table, by the fire, and listen. Then he walks out, and leaves his dirty glass on the table. Brendan cleans up after him, which tells you a lot about their lives.

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