Conor McPherson Plays: Three

by Conor McPherson

This volume of Conor McPherson's collected plays, covering a decade of writing, celebrates a fascination with the uncanny which has led him to be described as 'quite possibly the finest playwright of his generation' ( New York Times ). In Shining City , a man seeks help from a counsellor, claiming to have seen the ghost of his dead wife. The play, premiered at the Royal Court, London, is 'up there with The Weir, moving, compassionate, ingenious and absolutely gripping' ( Daily Telegraph ) The Seafarer , premiered at the National Theatre before going on to become a Tony Award-winning Broadway hit, tells the story of an extended Christmas Eve card game, but one played for the highest stakes possible. 'McPherson proves yet again he is both a born yarn-spinner and an acute analyst of the melancholy Irish manhood' ( Guardian ) Set in 'the big house' in 1820s rural Ireland, The Veil is McPherson's first period play. Seventeen-year-old Hannah is to be married off in order to settle the debts of the crumbling estate. But when Reverend Berkeley arrives, determined to orchestrate a séance, chaos is unleased. 'A cracking fireside tale of haunting and decay' ( The Times ) The Birds , hauntingly adapted from the short story by Daphne du Maurier, is 'deliciously chilling, claustrophobic, questioning, frightening; and with a twist' (Irish Independent). It is published here for the first time, as is The Dance of Death , a new version of Strindberg's classic, which premiered at the Trafalgar Studios in London. 'A spectacularly bleak yet curiously bracing drama that often makes you laugh out loud' ( Daily Telegraph ) Completing the volume is a Foreword by the author.

Genres: Plays

496 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 1, 2012

About the author

Conor McPherson is an Irish playwright and director.

Reviews

[Harry McDonald · Rating 4 out of 5]

Have dove head-first into McPherson this year - and have loved it. Dense, talky plays that - a rarity in twenty first-century drama - take the ideas of faith and hauntings really seriously. This collection features some of his crowning achievements, and also some deeply misguided adaptations of other writers' work.

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Shining City - 4/5: The awful things men do. So close to McPherson's Dublin Carol it feels like a companion piece. But he varies on a theme and it's always haunting.

The Seafarer - 4.5/5: I expect I'll come back to this and love it even more, probably once I understand the rules of poker better than I do. The thing I love about McPherson's work is the way it takes faith so seriously. He writes in a world, normally Irish so I suppose it makes sense, where ghosts and Hell and the devil stalk the world like anything else. And never more shimmeringly terrifying than in The Seafarer.

The Birds: 2/5 - ??????? why. This is barely The Birds, and it's barely a play.

The Veil: 4/5 - oh this is just full ghost story. I sort of loved it.

The Dance of Death: 3/5 - An uneven version of this black comedy. Some lines shimmer with violence and others seem to be jelly.

[Scott Cox · Rating 4 out of 5]

Irish playwright Conor McPherson explores the meaning of life, God, Heaven and Hell in these five plays. He utilizes well-known themes from Goethe, Hitchcock and Dracula as vehicles to explore the angst of modern life. The language is often crude, and the subject matter is mature, to say the least. These are not plays for the squeamish.

Shining City – A therapist tries to help rid a patient of a ghost from his past, and in turn, gains his own ghost.
“Just something else, besides all the pain and the confusion. Just something that gave everything… some meaning, you know? I’m talking about God, really, you know?”

The Seafarer – A Faustian Christmas eve poker game takes on high stakes amongst friends: monetarily, physically, and morally.
“I’m the son of the morning, Sharky. I’m the snake in the garden. I’ve come here for your soul this Christmas" . . . "The light under the Sacred Heart blinks on.”

The Birds – three survivors from a Hitchcock-style bird attack must learn to live together and attempt to discover their identity anew.
“‘Wait a minute, in all the cold eternal expanse of the cosmos, what if we are the only life anywhere in the vastness of time that can actually think, and knows that it exists, and that knows that it will die? And I realise that God is real. Because I am God. But I never realised before how helpless God is – in the face of reality and eternity. And how alone God is.“

The Veil – ghosts from the past haunt the future of a declining upper-class Irish household.
“This is all… the mind of God awakening and coming to know itself. And when we look at each other, just as I am looking at you now, it is as though God is looking at Himself in a mirror. And each eye, the beholder and the beheld, reflect the other back and forth as mirrors do, into a kind of genuine infinity. The infinity of God. You see? We are God… Isn’t that wonderful? Now, knowing that we are God is of course a great responsibility but it’s not something we want to bandy about!”

The Dance of Death – A military couple and friend from the past try to rid themselves of Hell – a Hell that is both past and present.
“Well, maybe this is Hell, and part of the agony is that we don’t even realise it?”

[Leif · Rating 4 out of 5]

You know, Conor McPherson truly is a gem. From criticisms of his early "talkers" he's proven himself remarkably versatile in his means while remaining admirably consistent in his ends: the theatre of ghosts and relationships gains from his adaptations of others' work (such as here, with Daphne Du Marier's "The Birds" and August Strindberg's The Dance of Death as well as his own original contributions such as, here, period piece The Veil which reads like a cross of Arcadia and Castle Rackrent and the excellent Shining City. All told there's plenty of thrills as well as the slower delights inherent to talking plays – many auspicious omens of a great future for this young playwright.

[Tom Romig · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been fortunate enough to see three of the five plays in this collection performed: Shining City, The Birds, and, just a few weeks ago, The Veil in its American premiere at Bethesda's Quotidian Theatre. Greatly enjoyed reading these plus the other two, The Seafarer and The Dance of Death. McPherson is a fine playwright; his characters vivid and his stories, often enhanced with convincing elements of the supernatural, are engrossing.