The Weir

The Weir - a play that started its life with a three week run in a 60 seat auditorium which turned into three months, and it then transferred to a 400-seater in London’s West End.

Despite a somewhat slow beginning with several prompts affecting the flow it didn’t take me long to see how difficult this play is for any actor as it has been written with stammered speech and half-finished sentences. The play has been written based on real but exaggerated ways of speaking which, at first, gave the impression that the cast were paraphrasing when in fact, it is naturalistic theatre taken another step further.

It won’t be long before we’ll be hearing “No, I don’t know what you mean” and “sorry, what did you say?”.

Director John Cunningham and his cast have brilliantly observed how people really speak when they have nothing in particular to say, this style must be very difficult to perform naturally and the actors in this production do so quite convincingly.

Unquestionably, the cast was a line-up of five experienced and worthy performers. The deciding factor of who were to be the front runners of this show was down to the script as each of the performers gave high quality interpretations, it was the job of the text to expose the strengths of the players.

Without hesitation, Mary Ellis gave the most striking and prevailing performance, her ‘turn’ in the spotlight was simply captivating.

The intimacy of the Nomads club house worked perfectly for this piece, the set looked the part and did all the right jobs in creating the required ambiance.

The technical areas were well coordinated and achieved all the desired effects from the constant wild track of the howling winds coming from outside to the zoning in lighting as each tale is conveyed.

The Irish accent is another major hurdle for this production which the cast handled very well though credit where it’s due, David Platts as Jim gave the most convincing and consistent delivery.

Nothing was forced, each player gave a laid back and relaxed performance - perhaps a little too laid back? Some more animation from the guys could have been beneficial when having a joke to add more contrast to work opposite the darker/deeper moments.

The major standalone feature of this play is the writing style and I have no doubt that this was the writer’s intention. ‘The Weir’ is a collection of ghost stories with no solid narrative running through however it still kept the audience engrossed.

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