Review: WIFE TO JAMES WHELAN, Jermyn Street Theatre

The New York-based Mint Theater Company specialises in theatrical gems neglected by accidents of history. On this occasion, their charge is Teresa Deevy’s 1937 Wife to James Whelan, chiefly famous for its rejection from Dublin’s Abbey Theatre under newly conservative censorship rules, and not performed in the UK since a brief New Diorama run in 2011.

Wife to James Whelan is, at its heart, a play about people at a crossroads – “at liberty to make a change”, as one character puts it. Nan (Clíona Flynn) is in love with the ambitious young businessman James Whelan (Fiach Kunz), who’s about to leave their small Irish town to seek his fortune in Dublin, yet a complex mix of stubbornness, poor choices made out of desperation and mixed messages from those around them prevent them ever being together.

Throughout, there is dignity granted to Nan and the impossible situations in which she is placed; by the second act, she has been married to another man and widowed, and cannot seek work due to her caring responsibilities towards her late husband’s father. James, meanwhile, climbs a Dickensian-flavoured slippery pole as an executive at a motor company, the prospect of marriage to his former boss’ haughty daughter (Molly Hanly) looming on the horizon.

But Deevy doesn’t let either of the love interests off the hook. In each of the play’s three clearly demarcated acts, Nan and James betray each other in ways that one ought not to be able to come back from, before stumbling back together, with Flynn and Kunz giving an understated rendering of their reluctant chemistry.

This production has a sensitivity to the tight structure of Deevy’s writing, her attention to how time marches on without letting us escape the ramifications of our choices. Neil Irish’s set is a tourist-friendly pastiche of Irish rural life, all mossy drystone walls, until it isn’t; in the second act, the countryside gives way to a barren office, which James has never quite managed to make feel like home.

This is also a show that takes the ritual of small town gossip extremely seriously. The brooding and the things left unsaid by James and Nan are constantly under a microscope, held by a dedicated group of supporting characters, always encouraging them either to forgive one another or to look elsewhere. It’s fitting that the show’s physical climax – a fistfight – isn’t performed on stage, but watched entirely through a window.

Eavan Gaffney shines as Kate, a lover turned “Aunt Sally” confidante to James, while David Rawle and Patrick McBrearty provide solid comic relief as overeager secretary Apollo and Nan’s old friend Tom, who insists to her in every act that “you and myself might hit it off”. Director Jonathan Bank – who first directed the play in New York in 2010 – takes a compact approach to conjuring up this tightknit social milieu, with everyone constantly running in and out of doors, everyone overhearing conversations not meant for them.

Wife to James Whelan was the last in a long line of plays Deevy submitted to the Abbey, many of which shared this play’s preoccupation with identity forming and making one’s own choices in the face of societal pressure. This thoughtful production presents a strong case for revisiting these earlier works, too.

Wife to James Whelan plays at Jermyn Street Theatre until 25 July

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