FAMILIAR OLD HAUNT

In his satisfyingly simple West End revival of 'The Weir', Conor McPherson focuses on naturalistic storytelling to weave the mundane with the supernatural

- Alice Saville

In a West End that's full of bombast - big tunes, blinding lights, spectacular feats of stage engineering - Conor McPherson's revival of his often-staged 1997 landmark play The Weir is a satisfyingly simple proposition.

In a note-perfect recreation of a rural pub, four men tell eerie stories to impress a young Dublin woman who's new to their small Irish town. Like the audience, she starts out gently amused - then ends up deeply moved by their encounters with the unseen and the transcendental.

Garlanded Irish film actor Brendan Gleeson is the splashiest piece of casting here, and his performance is a standout. He's got a compelling kind of worn-out gravity as schlubby mechanic Jack, who puts on his best suit to welcome the new girl in town, then tells spine-tingling tales with a master storyteller's assured confidence. But the whole cast does justice to this naturalistic setting, bringing carefully observed humorous touches to its insular little booze-soaked world.