How do you feel about nostalgia? Depending on the answer, one's reaction to a new production of John Murphy's The Country Boy, a blast from the sentimental Sixties past, may be an exclamatory aah or aagh. Rather to my surprise, I succumbed almost without a struggle to the play's primary emotional colours, and to the sheer - oh, God - sincerity of the performances.
Down on the Mayo farm, domineering Tom and placid Mary Kate carry on bravely while their mutinous younger son Curly is about to take off to the States to join his brother Eddie and wife Julia. The latter pair are coming home for a holiday first, and arrive with baggage, gifts and fancy camera. Eileen, Curly's girl-next-door, smiles uncomplainingly through it all.
The whiskey flows, and soon Eddie is revealing the angst-ridden facts of emigration; Curly is confused, but eventually sees where true happiness lies, as in home and marriage. Tom gruffly concedes defeat and the farm, Mary Kate is delighted, Eileen is a winner and, holy God, Eddie and Julia go courting in the back lane. Happy endings proliferate.
And it's lovely. There is truth in the relationships, black-and-white though they be. These people know and like each other, even though life has contrived to erect barriers of formality and convention between them. And, because they do, it is easy to like them, and to share in the pain of exposure that enables them to surmount those barriers. That near-redundant nodule, the lump in the throat, is here again, once more with feeling.
The cast are very good. Sean Colgan (Tom), Margo McLaughlin (Mary Kate), Ronan Mac Cairbre (Eddie), Anthony Fox (Curly), Gail Fitzpatrick (Julia) and Deirdre Walsh (Eileen) put us through the emotional wringer. Robert Lane, director and designer, recreates the atmosphere of the play's past glories, and delivers a winner once again.
