Reviewed by Giada
There’s a head-to-head currently unfolding between two of the biggest off-West End theatres. A sort of duel, a kind of homage: Ibsen vs Chekhov. And the critics, frankly, have got it all wrong. If you missed my thoroughly savage take on Ghosts, feel free to dig through my past reviews. But right now, I’m here to talk about The Brightening Air, currently playing at the Old Vic, because I am literally furious at what I’m reading online.
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| Photo by Manuel Harlan |
It’s been around five years since Conor McPherson’s last play. He’s pulling double duty this year, with Girl from the North Country also returning to the Old Vic later on. For his long-awaited return, he brings us the story of a dysfunctional family in 1980s rural Ireland. Stephen (Brian Gleeson) and Billy (Rosie Sheehy) live a monotonous life in a decaying family home, until it’s disrupted by the arrival of their uncle Pierre (Seán McGinley) and the return of their older brother Dermot (Chris O’Dowd).
True to the Irish temperament, each character appears stoic on the outside, but inside, they’ve internalised every disappointment, every unspoken regret. Conflict doesn’t erupt, it simmers. Time feels frozen, even as it creeps through the cracks of the old farmhouse walls. Then, just as you settle into the stillness, destiny takes a U-turn. The passive move forward, the strong step back. Dermot, now physically weakened like his uncle before him, is determined to win back his wife’s love. Billy, who has lost both her brother and her lover, realises (too late) just how much they meant to her. Everything changes, yet somehow stays the same. As they set the same table once again, Billy and Lydia dream of catching a train to Varanasi, chasing spiritual freedom. But it’s Stephen at the station, going to Glasgow, in search of something better.
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| Rosie Sheehy and Brian Gleason. Photo by Manuel Harlan |
What’s remarkable is how McPherson weaves this tangled family web: every rise and fall interlinked like threads in a tapestry, none able to exist without the others. Rosie Sheehy, following her Oliver nomination for Machinal, is nothing short of spectacular as Billy: outspoken, raw, and brutally honest. Her muscular performance captures the dignity and anguish of someone realising, with painful clarity, the cost of being “taken care of.”
The Brightening Air is a play about those who leave and those who stay—what lingers in the hearts of those who go, and what remains of them in the lives of those who stay. Somehow dark and twisted, noble and heart-breaking, this play is a haunting recollection of the relentless motion of a family as a universal matrix that contracts and expands without ever tearing.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Brightening Air plays at The Old Vic until Saturday 14th June. Tickets are available from https://www.oldvictheatre.com/stage/the-brightening-air/
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| Photo by Manuel Harlan. |
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