The Field

Olympia Theatre

An obsession with land is perhaps the single greatest legacy of Ireland's colonial occupation. In a 21st-century Irish landscape dotted with half-finished housing developments and abandoned estates, there is no doubt about the lasting resonance of that physical fixation today. In Joe Dowling's sensitive new production the contemporary connection is never forced. Instead we are reminded that – for all its melodramatic foreshadowing, for all its character grotesques – The Fieldoffers a sharp dissection of a country corrupted by the dirty hand of systems of authority and the spiritual poverty of a rural people valued in ideology only.

Dowling’s production opens unsurely with a silent tableau of the Bull McCabe and his farmer-son Tadhg gazing out upon the audience as if the auditorium is their field. Under the wind-whipped trees and photo-realistic flats of Frank Hallinan Flood’s overly fussy set design, the suggestion is one of subdued abstraction rather than arresting drama. However, if the production soon reverses into reverent realism, it offers a more immediately compelling absorption in the milieu of Carraigthomond, the small town that serves as the microcosm for an entire culture .

The characterisation by the ensemble cast is terrific. Brian Dennehy’s Bull McCabe (pictured) carries all his menace in his enormous shoulders. He does not take off his coat for the entire play, and in his constant fretting of his tweed cap he cuts an uncomfortable figure; a man trapped by the trappings of convention not merely his own greed. Meanwhile, Brendan Conroy’s Bird is encapsulated in the nervous flitter of his movements, John Olohan’s Dandy puts all his threatening jocularity into a handshake, and Bríd Ní Neachtain fits the entire life-story of the near-silent Mrs McCabe into a laugh. However, it is Derbhle Crotty, who uses a cigarette as an extension of her character as the put-upon Maimie Flanagan, who seems to offer the play’s central tragedy. Her transformation from flirty diva to dowdy demoralisation is visually and emotionally moving, despite the fact that her speech in the final act provides some of the funniest moments in the play.

Yes, for all its tragedy, Keane’s greatest skill is in his understanding of character; the scabrous wit that can turn bitterness into an affectation. In this production, he is served more than well.

Runs until Feb 13, then INEC, Killarney (Feb 15-17) and the Royal Theatre Castlebar (Feb 24-26).