Review: THE BRIGHTENING AIR, starring Chris O'Dowd

The Atlantic Coast of Ireland starts in the south with ruthlessly exploited leprechaunish charm and the gawping American tourists of the Ring of Kerry, all instafriendly Emerald Isle vistas. Going north, the sky appears to lower, visibility diminishes, the winds and lashing waves gain a hostility, the protection afforded by Croagh Patrick, the mountain named for the patron saint, feeling inadequate to hold back the hum of malevolence. Sligo is still 80 miles or so further on.

You can double that sense of foreboding and more 40 years or so ago, with the Celtic Tiger yet to roar, immigration still running a long way behind emigration and the Church yet to see its baleful influence dismantled by scandal and changing social mores. That is the environment in which Conor McPherson sets his first play since 2016’s musical, Girl From The North Country (back at this theatre in the summer). 

Stephen, reluctantly, looks after his sister, Billie, who displays symptoms of mild autism, the pair living a ramshackle old farmstead as you might imagine Vanya and Sonya would were they Irish and not Russian. Both are frustrated and disappointed with the hand life has dealt them, but they get by because doing anything else is just too much trouble. But trouble finds them in the form of their Uncle Pierre, a blind, excommunicated priest who wouldn’t be out of place on Craggy Island, who pitches up with his live-in housekeeper, Elizabeth, and a plan. 

His mad ravings could be sidelined easily enough, but he has an ally in the third sibling, Dermot, who arrives with a teenage girlfriend, Freya, and a barrel-load of entitlement. His neglected wife, the beautifully tragic and, as it turns out, tragically beautiful, Lydia, tries to impose some kind of orthodox domesticity on the house, but she has enough problems holding herself together, never mind this cornucopia of neuroses.      

This ensemble production, also directed by McPherson, is blessed with fine acting. Brian Gleeson does his best work with Hannah Morrish - we clock early on that Lydia has married the wrong brother - and, dialing up the ever-present undertow of Irish Magical Realism, Stephen, heartbreakingly, explains why. He’s good too with Rosie Sheehy, her Billie trapped by her obsessions and often disengaged or hostile, but also human and fragile, especially with her would be beau, Brendan, a lovely cameo from Eimhin Fitzgerald Doherty. People can decide for themselves whether Billie’s sweary neurodivergency should be relied on for quite as many laughs as it is - certainly too many for my taste.

There’s a good, tight three-handed play in there, but the problems arise as the narrative expands beyond that not quite ménage à trois. 

Chris O’Dowd brings star wattage and fine comic timing (including acing an ad lib that’ll work for most of the run), but the narcissistic Dermot is unkind, uncaring and as unwelcome a presence in our lives as he is in his siblings’. Aisling Kearns and Derbhle Crotty do what they can with the teen, Freya, and the housekeeper, Elizabeth, but in a play that suffers pacing issues with over-exposition elsewhere, both characters are underwritten.

Seán McGinley manages to peel away from the long shadow of Father Jack and effects a splendid transformation in the final act, but Pierre can’t escape the caricature that we’ve seen from at least the time of Gustave Courbet’s corrupt priests painted amongst the mourners in Funeral at Ornans - and likely long before that.   

In assessing how one of today's leading playwrights has taken inspiration from Anton Chekhov, the greatest of them all, I am reminded of the Lurcherdor Dog. Bred to combine the athleticism of the greyhound with the intelligence of the labrador, they sometimes get the intelligence of the greyhound and the athleticism of a labrador. That dog, like the play, is serviceable, but it’s not quite all you were hoping for.

The Brightening Air at The Old Vic until 14 June

Photo images: Manuel Harlan

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