{"id":33073,"date":"2025-09-20T17:09:15","date_gmt":"2025-09-20T17:09:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/33073\/"},"modified":"2025-09-20T17:09:15","modified_gmt":"2025-09-20T17:09:15","slug":"brendan-gleeson-makes-his-west-end-debut-in-style-patrick-marmion-reviews-conor-mcphersons-the-weir-at-harold-pinter-theatre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/33073\/","title":{"rendered":"Brendan Gleeson makes his West End debut in style: PATRICK MARMION reviews Conor McPherson’s ‘The Weir’ at Harold Pinter Theatre"},"content":{"rendered":"

By PATRICK MARMION <\/p>\n

Published: 19:44 EDT, 19 September 2025 | Updated: 08:04 EDT, 20 September 2025 <\/p>\n

The Weir at Harold Pinter Theatre, London<\/a><\/p>\n

Rating:<\/p>\n

Astonishing to think that at the tender age of 70, the terrific Irish actor Brendan Gleeson<\/a> is only now making his West End debut.<\/p>\n

Best known on screen as Harry Potter<\/a>‘s Mad-Eye Moody, it probably needed a bottle of something special to mark the occasion – and in Conor McPherson’s wistful Irish classic, The Weir, it’s not just special, it’s vintage.<\/p>\n

The setting is a remote pub on the west coast of Ireland in 1996, just before the start of the tourist season and the arrival of ‘The Germans’.<\/p>\n

Here, three local men and the barman, Brendan (Owen McDonnell, Grace’s wicked second husband in season two of Apple TV’s Bad Sisters), tell ghost stories on a wet, windy night as they vie for the attention of a young woman who’s moved from Dublin to their corner of the sticks.<\/p>\n

Chief among them, with a ghoulish tale of a ‘fairy road’ that passes through her new home, is Gleeson’s character, Jack.<\/p>\n

And in McPherson’s fine revival of the play, which previously starred Brian Cox, Gleeson is a craggy hillside of a man propping up the bar and having to settle for bottled Guinness because of a dysfunctional beer tap.<\/p>\n

\"Brendan <\/p>\n

Brendan Gleeson (right) marks his West End debut in style in ‘The Weir’, writes Patrick Marmion<\/p>\n

\"Kate <\/p>\n

Kate Phillips (above) as the mysterious Dublin woman, Valerie, turns the evening on its head with an agonising tale of why she came out West in Conor McPherson’s show<\/p>\n

He’s a rural colossus of yore, white shirt barely encompassing his girth, inside a subsiding black suit that was once an Irish standard.<\/p>\n

Although his diction sometimes drifts into inaudibility, Gleeson is a natural for the enchanting poetry of McPherson’s Blarney, which hypnotises the audience with its murky mood and lilting rhythms.<\/p>\n

Perched like a giant on a stool, Gleeson bats off the gadfly antics of small-time local businessman Finbar, who’s given twitchy, cheesy charm by Tom Vaughan-Lawlor.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He’s more on a level with Sean McGinley’s Jim, a quietly spooky barside wraith who orders shots of whisky, or ‘small ones’, and recalls an uncomfortable graveyard yarn.<\/p>\n

All the while, McDonnell’s barman is a steady presence, fielding orders and ‘debating’ whether he’ll have a small one himself.<\/p>\n

But Kate Phillips (Jane Seymour in Wolf Hall) as the mysterious Dublin woman, Valerie, turns the evening on its head with an agonising tale of why she came out West.<\/p>\n

Almost 30 years after it premiered in 1997, it’s impressive how The Weir has stood the test of time. It catches an Ireland on the cusp of change, haunted by a mythic and painful past.<\/p>\n

But the warmth of the laughter that rolls off the audience is remarkable. And what better actor to pop the cork on such intoxicating liquor than the inscrutable, bearlike Gleeson?<\/p>\n

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