Dublin Theatre Festival 2024: The House

Amy Molloy and Marty Rea in The House. Image, Ros Kavanagh

*****

Tom Murphy's enduring classic from 2000, The House, is not an easy play to stage. Like Rachmaninoff's piano concertos there's layers of complexity and endless moving parts beneath its straightforward melodies. Hit the wrong note and Murphy’s classic tale about the immigrant diaspora of the 1950s returning home for the holidays rings dull and dated. It’s clash of memory and reality, of belonging and rootlessness making near impossible demands. It’s not enough to possess a sterling cast and first rate tech, nor a company sensitive to the Murphy oeuvre such as Druid. It requires a central vision of unadulterated genius to marshal its complex components into a unified and effecting whole. A genius of the calibre of Garry Hynes. Evident in Druid's superlative production currently gracing Dublin Theatre Festival.

Liam Heslin, Colm Lennon and Marty Rea in The House. Image, Ros Kavanagh

If Murphy’s story is paramount, the manner in which his story is told is equally important. With a painters eye and a musicians understanding of emotional complexity, Hynes proves a master storyteller. Before a word is spoken Hynes’ genius is conspicuous in the opening image. Francis O’Connor’s astonishing set, his costume designs with Clíodhna Hallissey, James F. Ingalls extraordinary lights and Sinéad Diskin’s sound design collaborating to produce a painterly image of extraordinary power. O’Connor’s expressionist set a hybrid of pub and house, as was often the case in the 1950s. It’s floating glass shards, like shattered memories, and its broken mirror like a jigsaw with key pieces missing evoking bad luck, faulty perceptions and a subtle undercurrent of violence.

Marty Rea and Marie Mullen in The House. Image, Ros Kavanagh

Against which a story of a returning, immigrant diaspora in the 1950s during their builder’s holidays serves as a commentary on a time and a place and a people. Like Marty Rea’s Christy Cavanagh, a man in awe of the family in the big house who cared for him as a child when his mother died. A man lost in memories of yesteryear. Devoted to the matriarchal Mrs de Burca, a commanding Marie Mullen. Rae and Mullen providing the emotional lynchpin around which everything revolves. Mullen representing a sense of home, of mothering, of place and belonging. Something Christy is desperately in search of. Hynes showing compositional brilliance as Christy sits on stairs at the top of the landing, or peering around corners, a child and man at one and the same time trapped in the present and the past.

Donncha O'Dea, Darragh Feehely, Amy Molloy, Andrew Macklin in The House. Image, Ros Kavanagh

Like Liam Heslin’s superb Peter, and Colm Lennon’s brilliantly articulated Goldfish, Christy possesses a mongrel soul that renders him a breed apart. Too English or American to be Irish, too Irish to be anything else, separated from soil and rootless abroad, money, sex and same old stories become their blow hard currency. Men who took to the building sites, or, like Christy, or Amy Molloy’s delightfully seductive Susanne, undertook questionable ways to survive and make money. Traces of A Whistle in the Dark reverberating in the criminal darkness that follows Christy about. Learning the de Burca’s house is up for sale, Christy decides to buy it at a fair price. Marty Rae extraordinary as a character whose emotional complexity sees him shift from young boy to calculating criminal, from womaniser to violently dangerous with ease. Rae transitioning seamlessly in an utterly compelling performance.

Cathal Ryan, Donncha O'Dea, Liam Heslin, Colm Lennon, Marty Rea in The House. Image, Ros Kavanagh

Indeed, performances across the board prove simply superlative, each achieving three dimensional characters possessed by a singular, driving impulse. Jessica Dunne Perkins as the brutalised Louisa, Darragh Feehely’s Kerrigan a solicitor with a conscience, Cathal Ryan as the local loudmouth, Donncha O’Dea as the scene stealing pub owner Bunty, Andrew Macklin as police office Harley and a divine Rachel O’Byrne as Marie are each extraordinary. As is the treasure that is Marie Mullen. Immaculate as Mrs de Burca, whose joyous luminosity visibly shrinks under the burden Christy places on her as the end approaches. It’s indicative of Hynes’ genius, and Rae’s impeccable performance, that as the final scene plays out Christy is both indecent villain and a man trying to do the decent thing. Left with a house, but not a home. Hynes’ interpretation of Murphy’s The House one the best and most important revivals of the year, yielding endless interpretive riches. A production not to be missed by anyone serious about great Irish theatre.

The House by Tom Murphy, directed by Garry Hynes and presented by Druid, runs at The Gaiety Theatre as part of  Dublin Theatre Festival 2024 until October 6.

For more information visit Dublin Theatre Festival 2024 or The Gaiety Theatre