Mark Babych’s final production for the Octagon as artistic director is a fitting way for him to bow out. Over the years his hugely inventive vision, combined with a craftsman-like technique, have been seen at their best in plays whose roots are deep in the Irish tradition - and this one by Conor McPherson is, of course, no exception.
Michael O’Connor makes a wonderfully vulnerable Sharky Harkin, a man with reputedly a violent past but, now on the wagon for Christmas, it seems he wouldn’t say boo to a goose - or should that be a ghost, we have cause to wonder. Is he watching over his blind brother, Richard, a knowing drunk who is redeemed from caricature by Peter Dineen’s remarkably sensitive portrayal, or is he dependent on him?
At least we seem to know where we are with their two drinking buddies. Brendan Charleson’s Ivan seems just another feckless drunk. And Leigh Symonds’ over-zealous Nicky Giblin is currently knocking off Sharky’s ex. But we are wrong to look here for the conflict we just know is coming.
It arrives, in fact, in archetypal form, from the outsider, the saturnine stranger from nowhere, who blarneys his way into the minds and hearts of the innocent locals. Except maybe Sharky is not so innocent. He may have killed a man years ago and entered some kind of Faustian pact to gain his freedom. That’s the line that Fintan McKeown’s enigmatic Mr Lockhart takes anyway, and he does seem remarkably percipient, more Priestley’s Inspector than Marlowe’s Mephistophilis.
It is an intriguing, edgy, powerful play with a completeness of its own.
Production information can change over the run of the show.
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