Writer/director Conor McPherson has always flirted with the supernatural in his works, not least in his most famous: ‘The Weir’ (1997) and ‘The Seafarer’(2006, his last play proper). But they were also remarkable for their magical realist style, set in a recognisable modern Ireland.
In ‘The Veil’, McPherson becomes bogged down in genre. Or at least, McPherson the director does: his naturalist leanings do not seem best suited to this new script’s odd mix of Victorian melodrama, Chekhovian shocks and flippant Irish mirth.
The year is 1822, the setting a crumbling mansion outside Jamestown, and colonial aristocrat Lady Madeleine Lambroke (Fenella Woolgar) knows her time is up. The tenants are refusing to pay their taxes; her husband hanged himself years ago; the estate only runs because her loyal/besotted steward Fingal (Peter McDonald) has done without pay for months.
Salvation beckons in the form of escape to England via an arranged marriage for her daughter Hannah (Emily Taaffe). But Hannah has been hearing voices and her escorts to England – grandiloquent defrocked reverend Berkeley (Jim Norton) and laudanum-ravaged philosopher Audelle (Adrian Schiller) – are determined to hold a séance to get to the bottom of it.
It’s a very odd play, heavy in symbolism and imagery, full of dark poetry and memorable characters. Yet despite uniformly excellent performances – Woolgar is effortlessly sympathetic, Norton and Schiller a brilliantly creepy double act – this production feels strangely humdrum.
The play’s wider meaning is elusive, and McPherson directs it as a straight-up period drama with a couple of spooky moments, when it would have surely been far more effective if he’d just gothicked the hell out of the thing.
Despite the louring trees of Rae Smith’s set, there is little sense of the encroaching Irish wild, and it all runs out of steam in the second half. It’s entertaining enough, but this is a play for another director to unlock. For now, ‘The Veil’ keeps its secrets.