The Seafarer

Riverbank Arts Centre, Kildare

IN ADDITION TO the Old English poem from which Conor McPherson’s 2006 play takes its title, and the legend of the Wicklow Hellfire Club, from which the play takes its supernatural premise (a card game with the devil), the playwright cites another revealing influence: the winter solstice at the Newgrange passage tomb.

“At the darkest time,” says McPherson, “there can still be hope, light and energy flowing in.”

It’s that confluence of lyric, folk yarn and morality tale that gives McPherson’s belief in redemption momentum. It also means the plot can be simplicity itself. In a grimy home in Dublin, only slightly less cheery than a megalithic passage tomb, the recently dry alcoholic Sharky (Joe Savino) returns to care for his still-lubricated, cantankerous and blind brother, Richard (Garrett Keogh).

They are joined by a comically inebriated, short-sighted friend Ivan (Frankie McCafferty) and by Sharky’s rival, Nicky (Paul Roe), who introduces Mr Lockhart (Robert O’Mahony), a stranger so suspiciously otherworldly he speaks with a growl.

When even the votive candle of a Sacred Heart on Owen Mac Cárthaigh’s suggestive set struggles to keep up its spirits, Nomad Theatre Network’s and Decadent Theatre Company’s co-production presents a finely considered world of lost souls.

The challenge facing director Andrew Flynn is to strike a tone between naturalism and supernaturalism. Despite its boozy, desperate comedy, McPherson’s dialogue is carefully demotic. His set-up and plot contrivances, on the other hand, are endearingly artificial.

The cast’s solution is to underplay the drama and the comedy, letting surprise and significance spill from unlikely locations.

The play's structural shortcomings and philosophical strengths solidify with revival, but McPherson's descriptions of hell – which is to say, alcoholism – are forever haunting. In either case, the detail and uplift of this production cements The Seafarer's place as a seasonal favourite.

Concludes at Town Hall, Galway, November 29th to December 3rd.