The Stage

Big Maggie

Published Tuesday 8 May 2007 at 16:35 by Jason Best

Susan Cummins’ Big Maggie Polpin, the indomitable matriarch at the heart of John B Keane’s drama of Irish rural life set in 1963, is as hard as the limestone headstone she plans for her late, unlamented husband.

When the play opens, the dead man is scarcely beneath the ground before Maggie begins laying down the law to her four grown-up children. From now on, she will rule the roost in the family’s shop, farm and home.

The fierceness of Maggies will is terrifying and initially, the audience’s sympathies are entirely against her. But as her uncompromising stance drives her children away from her one by one, we slowly come to understand why she is so unyielding. 25 years shackled to a womanising husband in a society where sanctimonious religion enforces sexual repression has made her the way she is and left her desperate to achieve self-realisation.

Conveying this superbly, Cummins’ performance dominates the play, but what makes this production so impressive is the high quality of acting throughout the 10-strong cast. Joanne Bond excels as the eldest daughter, who has some of mother’s flintiness and might well repeat her fate and Napoleon Ryan is fine as the weak-willed son who finally refuses to bow to his mother’s purpose.

Outside the family, director Tom Begley provides a vivid cameo as a womanising salesman, while John Casey, as the droopy stonemason who is far softer than the material of his trade, supplies some nice comic touches. But the whole here is even greater than the sum of its parts and with the cast all sparking off one another under Begley’s assured direction every scene crackles with energy.