If you listen carefully in the silences between words in the Harlequin Players’ new production of The Ferryman you can almost hear, alongside the cry of the banshees, the echoes of jaws dropping to the floor in the room when the decision was made to produce the play here. It is a massive, sprawling work with an immensely powerful narrative and a cast of 20, only half of whom are adult actors, presenting a huge challenge for anyone, and this is only the second amateur company to tackle it.
When it first appeared at London’s Royal Court in 2017, Jez Butterworth’s most recent play was met with widespread if not universal acclaim, and it’s clear that not everyone quite got it. However, it soon gathered momentum, collecting a trolley load of awards along the way, including Oliviers and Tonys for best play. Whilst Jerusalem is raising eyebrows in its current West End revival for failing to clarify its message, The Ferryman stands proud and unabashed, and is richly deserving of repeated retelling and re-watching.
In a prologue the scene is set: 10 years ago, IRA activist Seamus Carney ‘disappeared’. The local priest Father Horrigan is met in a darkened alleyway by Magennis and Muldoon, who inform him that Carney’s body has been found in a peat bog. They use threats to secure his help in getting information about Carney’s family.
Meanwhile the Carneys and their cousins the Corcorans are preparing to bring in the harvest, and are planning the annual feast to celebrate. In the first of a series of portents of doom, their harvest goose has escaped and, when Father Horrigan arrives with the news of Seamus’s discovery, the past creeps ever closer to haunt the family, as their secrets bubble from beneath the surface.
This is a slowly simmering play, in which the miasma of death and despair seeps out of every line. The narrative centres around Seamus’s widow Caitlin and her brother-in-law Quinn Carney. Quinn’s family have taken Cait in and she has become a surrogate mother to the Carney children, while their natural mother Mary spends most of her time confined to bed, with one imagined ailment or another. Cait’s own young son Oisin has almost become one of them but often stands on the sidelines watching, and he harbours deep resentment for the lies told about his father.
Elders of the family, Uncle Pat and Aunt Pat and the mysterious Aunt Maggie Faraway, interject with their own thoughts on history and philosophy, with Aunt Maggie’s occasional periods of lucid speech almost summoning the banshees from the ether. Tom Kettle (the only English part in the play) seems to occupy his own world, but is tolerated with a mixture of kindness and forbearance. He provides a separate thread that runs through the work, throwing up parallels to the past and eventually precipitating the first of the multiple tragedies that bring the piece to its blistering conclusion.
The central performances from Adrian Grace and Sian Weedon as Quinn and Caitlin are magnificent. They absolutely capture the barely hidden longing that exists between them, and navigate the many turns of mood from tenderness to rage perfectly. There is a weary resignation and poignant sadness to Nicola Holland’s Mary Carney each time she emerges from her bed to witness her family functioning without her. Andrea Jones really goes for Aunt Pat’s seething anger over the British response to the hunger strikes, while John Booth’s Uncle Pat provides a gentle foil to her with his poetic interludes. Aunt Maggie’s infrequent but often lengthy passages of dialogue bring the action to a pause each time she emerges from her silence, and Vanessa Duffy gives genuine weight to these almost mystical utterings that seem to predict the future while recalling the past.
Stuart McNeil gives a suitably low-key performance as Father Horrigan, walking an emotional tightrope throughout, under the looming threat from Frank Magennis and the malevolent Mr Muldoon, ably portrayed by Harry Johnson and Michael Gallagher. Meanwhile, David Lee has a tricky part to play as the other-worldly Tom Kettle. Not the sharpest wit and slow of speech, Tom provides a sounding board for many of the Anglo-Irish tensions that underpin the work. Lee certainly captures the naivety and inherent danger of the role, and delivers a compelling performance, although at times his faltering mode of speech is used to slight excess.
The overwhelming triumph of this production is the youth element of the company. Half the cast comprises children and teenagers and they approach the immensely difficult subject matter and very grown-up dialogue with tremendous flair and confidence. Especially outstanding among them are Ethan Weedon, Emilia Lewis, Joshua Besso and Sam Mulford as Michael, Shena, Shane and Diarmaid Carney, and particular note has to go to Joseph Tomlinson who is simply stunning as the fragile and conflicted Oisin.
Director Yvette Owen has succeeded in getting the play’s running time down with careful tightening (originally well in excess of 3 hours) and the choice not to use actual livestock onstage is a sensible one. Whilst Sam Mendes’ brave decision to work with both children and animals was a crowd pleaser in the West End, the appearance of a couple of bunnies and a very inquisitive goose did have the unfortunate side-effect of distracting attention from the real purpose of Tom carrying them, and I’m sure that some London audiences missed much crucial dialogue behind the enraptured oohs and aahs. The use of stuffed equivalents here enables the focus to remain on the words, and people will remember Tom more than the goose.
The omission of the original interval after Act I, running it directly into Act II makes the first half of what is a hefty three act play quite a marathon and perhaps, despite its obvious effect on running time, another break could have more comfortable for the audience. Nonetheless the evening held everyone in rapt attention right up to the tragic denouement, and Owen can be immensely proud of what she has achieved with this remarkable company. This has been the Harlequin’s first full scale season since covid restrictions ended, and what a bold and brilliant way bring it to its close.
Production photography by Mark Carline
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| Sian Weedon and Vanessa Duffy as Caitlin Carney and Aunt Maggie |
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| Michael Gallagher, Harry Johnson and Adrian Grace as Muldoon, Magennis and Quinn Carney |
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| Members of the cast of The Ferryman |
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