THE SEAFARER. To 3 March
Coventry
THE SEAFARER
by Conor McPherson
Warwick Arts Centre to 3 March 2007
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat 2.30pm
Runs 2hr 35min One interval
TICKETS: 024 7652 4524
www.warwickartscentre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden
A first-rate mix of writing, direction and performances.
Conor McPherson’s latest play is different from his first success The Weir, yet remarkably similar. Both examine the aridity among a group of men, surface-friendly but with underlying grudges, as they meet and drink. Then someone different - a woman, the devil - arrives. A lot’s said, not a lot happens, but a difference is made.
In both there are ghostly presences and social isolation. Seafarer’s set in Sharkey’s home, where his life’s controlled by blinded older brother Richard; Sharky’s the unassertive type who’ll walk in the rain while his wife’s car's being driven by their friend.
This home is a basement; there’s a door out-back, but the front door’s a floor up. Sunk in its own misery it has little sense of any society around; except possibly an attack by (unseen) local vandals. It’s a place as remote in its way as The Weir’s rural pub.
There’s allusion, from the title on, to mythology and the Anglo-Saxon poem The Seafarer; no-one here’s a sailor, though they’re pretty much all at sea. The play opens comically, where it’s at its least gripping. The detritus of last night’s drinking-session lies around, elements of biographical fragments are picked up, but nothing’s set straight
This ambiguity becomes powerful when the diabolic Mr Lockhart enters, and, while outwardly reticent, targets Sharky for some past misdeed. Elsewhere, Lockhart’s relaxed politeness flurries only in brief menace at others’ secrets or physical discomfort at the sound of music.
Christmas Eve is the setting, and a card-game (the only rival to drink in these men’s celebrations) the occasion of the final confrontation. Tension is raised, until things end in an unlikely twist of events, cunningly given plausibility through earlier references.
The acting’s immaculate in McPherson’s production, from London’s Cottesloe Theatre, a trio of performances each building its little world (Richard and Ivan both punch the air in self-satisfied glee) round Karl Johnson’s Sharky, his anxiety about everything furrowing through the bruises of his latest beating. And Ron Cook’s magnificent; smartly-dressed, suave and restrained yet exuding a sense of threat in a fixed look or the flick of a vocal tone.
Richard Harkin: Jim Norton
James ‘Sharky’ Harkin: Karl Johnson
Ivan Curry: Conleth Hill
Nicky Giblin: Michael McElhatton
Mr Lockhart: Ron Cook
Director: Conor McPherson
Designer: Rae Smith
Lighting: Neil Austin
Sound: Mathew Smethurst-Evans
Dialect coach: Majella Hurley
Fight director: Terry King
2007-03-03 11:18:58