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| Stephanie Jean Lane, Philip Themio Stoddard, Harry Smith, Sean Bridgers and Joey Collins in The Weir. (Photo: David Dashiell) |
Director Eric Hill, scenic designer Randall Parsons, lighting designer Matthew E. Adelson and a first-rate cast of five actors bring a hushed intimacy and a profound sense of place and community to the Berkshire Theatre Group’s production of Conor McPherson’s The Weir. The play, which premiered in London in 1997 and transferred to Broadway two years later, is set in a rural pub in County Leitrim where four locals share drinks with a young Dubliner, Valerie (Stephanie Jean Lane), who has just rented an old house in the area. Finbar (Harry Smith), a hotel proprietor who no longer lives in the countryside, is showing her around the town. The pub’s owner and bartender is Brendan (Philip Themio Stoddard); the other men in the room, Jack (Sean Bridgers) and Jim (Joey Collins), are older. Randomly the conversation turns to episodes that the tipplers have had, directly or indirectly, with fairies and ghosts.