In Northern Ireland in 1981 The Troubles pit Irish against Irish, resulting in a great deal of anguished, epic drama. Think Michael McDonagh, and the movies of Ken Loach. In Jez Butterworth’s The Ferryman, at the Bernard B. Jacobs theater on Broadway, a monumental 3 hours and 15 minutes zip by, beginning with the news: the body of a ten-years missing man, turned up in a bog, hands and feet bound. Nearby his wife holds the fort, living in her husband’s brother Quinn’s lively household with her son, now a teen. To celebrate the harvest they are cooking goose, and just as the family learns the news about the recovered body, the once live bird hangs on a hook at the kitchen window, bound, emblematic of Seamus’ remains, best left to the imagination.
After a recent performance we ran into Fionnula Flanagan who plays Aunt Maggie Faraway, seated onstage in a wheelchair, a teller of tales, and the play’s oracle, mystically far away as her name suggests. Flanagan noted that Sam Mendes’ direction was meticulous, his eye on every detail and movement of a cast of 22, the chaos and exuberance of family life cleverly orchestrated including dancing and singing. Flanagan laughs when a fan tells her she has a lovely voice: “I don’t even sing in the shower.”
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