The Weir review - Brendan Gleeson makes his West End debut in a 'spellbindingly atmospheric' play

Four men and a woman walk into a pub... It sounds like the start of a bad joke, right? Indeed it does, but The Weir's writer Connor McPherson has more on his mind than easy laughs when he assembles this quintet in a pub in some isolated corner of rural Ireland. 

Not that the play doesn't have its share of humour. Directed by the writer himself, the revival at the Harold Pinter Theatre is full to the brim with observational comedy. Few contemporary dramatists have as fine an ear for the way people really talk, such as when one character muses "There's a lot to be said for independence..." then can't come up with anything more to say about it.

Set solely in a dimly-lit watering hole with the wind howling outside, McPherson's masterpiece is spellbindingly atmospheric as its protagonists swerve from small talk to telling spooky stories.

World-weary mechanic Jack (Brendan Gleeson) is the first to arrive and he's joined by barman Brendan (Owen McDonnell), old codger Jim (Sean McGinley) and show-off Finbar (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor).

Affectionate put-downs fly, the way they always do when a bunch of blokes hang out at their local, but also in their midst is Dubliner Valerie (Kate Phillips), whom Finbar has been trying to impress by showing her around the area. She listens to their ghostly tales, then tells one of her own that renders them speechless.

Much has been made of the fact that this is Gleeson's West End debut, but it's not as if the man best known for his abundance of film and TV work is a stranger to the stage. He's done plenty of theatre in his native Dublin. 

But now, at age 70, he's like a fine, matured wine of the kind the unnamed pub in The Weir doesn't stock. His Jack is huge yet frail, garrulous yet melancholy, full of chit-chat but haunted by the fact he's let love pass him by.

Gleeson is the big draw but he's surrounded by extraordinarily good actors who bring remarkable nuance to people who are archetypes infused with so much character detail that they've vibrantly alive within the confines of Rae Smith's deliberately ramshackle set.

And it's people, not punchlines that McPherson is interested in, in a play that - like its leading man - has matured nicely since it debuted in 1997. The supernatural elements that are spoken about but never shown feel profound yet elusive and ephemeral, and the same could be said about The Weir. You come away feeling like you've witnessed something truly magnificent in the most mundane of settings.

The Weir is at the Harold Pinter Theatre, London, until 6 December.