Stanford Friedman

Four Irishmen and a lass walk into a bar and tell some ghost stories. No joke—that, in short, is the premise of Conor McPherson’s atmospheric drama, The Weir. Set in a pub in 1998 rural Ireland and consisting primarily of monologues, the work does not so much have a beginning, middle, and end as it has a beginning and five middles. Irish Repertory Theatre director Ciarán O’Reilly calls on a veteran cast to make the play palatable, and they do not disappoint, together offering an engaging interpretation of a piece that, if structurally curious, at least features the three pillars of any good Irish play: loss, regret, and loneliness.

Dark times demand a dark musical and with its sociopathic leading man, a body count of snuffed out high schoolers, plus the lure of suicide as a leitmotif. Heathers: The Musical certainly delivers the heebie-jeebies. But, like an anxious teen from a broken home, the jam-packed staging tries extra hard to please. The book and score by Kevin Murphy and Laurence O’Keefe wants to be earnest as much as it wants to be twisted, wishes to be empowering as much as it wishes to be bleak. The result, under the breakneck direction of Andy Fickman, is that there is something for everyone, but little that feels sincere. Thankfully, a powerhouse sextet of women are on hand, blissfully belting their way through the madness, in a captivating show of strength.