The Brightening Air review – shades of Vanya as a Sligo family squabble, tease and wrestle

Old Vic, London Terrific performances from Chris O’Dowd and Rosie Sheehy lead a populous family drama hinging on a broken-down country farmhouseConor McPherson’s family dysfunctional drama seems to take its inspiration from numerous sources: the title is a quote from WB Yeats’s poem, The Song of Wandering Aengus, which lends it an air of poetic mysticism. There are shades of Uncle Vanya, a play McPherson has adapted, with a plot involving a family reuniting in the countryside to feud over the ownership of land and inheritance. There are elements of the American family dysfunction drama too, though this is distinctly Irish in its cadence, rhythm and setting. Individually, each influence is valid and every idea is a good one but together the play seems to swing on its hinges, like this family’s clapped out farm-door.We are in the rural depths of County Sligo in 1981, inside a household run by two siblings: the stoic Stephen (Brian Gleeson), who is existing rather than living, and the eccentric and autistic Billie (Rosie Sheehy). They are marooned on the down-at-heel farm, just about making ends meet until their wealthier brother, Dermot (Chris O’Dowd) drops by. His presence coincides with the arrival of an old blind uncle and former clergyman (Seán McGinley) who has been ejected from church quarters and now shuffles into the family home with his housekeeper, Elizabeth (Derbhle Crotty), with a dispute over the farm’s ownership – though this plot point does not emerge until late on. Continue reading...

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