From star theatre combo Jez Butterworth and Sam Mendes, The Ferryman transports groups back to the Troubles.
The Ferryman is a new play that deeply immerses its audiences in the passions and politics of Troubles-era Northern Ireland.
It’s 1981, and Seamus Carney has been found dead, 10 years after his mysterious IRA-linked disappearance.
Most of the play takes place in the bustling kitchen of his brother Quinn, a reformed IRA activist, where Seamus’s wife and son have lived since he disappeared.
It’s harvest time, and the happy, children-filled household is preparing to harvest all day, and feast all night – but they are interrupted by a visitor.
Subtle changes in tone see the three-hour play plummet from joyful celebration, music and laugh-out-loud jokes one minute, to tense quiet and sullen sadness the next.
All is not as it first appears, and as the back stories of the many characters are explored – furious Aunt Pat and jokey Uncle Pat, dementia-suffering Aunt Maggie, and heartbreaking Englishman Tom Kettle – an intense picture of rural life amid one of the most shocking conflicts of modern history is revealed.
But it’s the central, almost unspoken love story between Quinn Carney and Caitlin that grips the audience by the heart. Paddy Considine is excellent as Quinn, while Laura Donnelly, whose uncle’s real-life disappearance inspired Jez Butterworth to write the play, is equally delightful as Caitlin.
Directed by Sam Mendes, The Ferryman is booking at the Gielgud Theatre in the West End until 6 January 2018.
- Book tickets at goo.gl/1XEnbF
