Appropriately, bottles of Jameson and Hennessy rub shoulders alongside the programme for Aristocrats by Brian Friel. I went to the matinee on Saturday.
Brian Friel is such a successful and prolific playwright that he needs no introduction. However, reading a list of his work in the programme the only one that I remember is Dancing at Lughnasa in the West End in the 1990s. I haven’t seen the film with Meryl Streep and Michael Gambon to pull in the punters and an Irish cast to do the acting.
Aristocrats is set at Ballybeg Hall in Co Donegal. It is the demesne of the O’Donnells, a Catholic family who have been lawyers for the last three generations. They are gathered to celebrate the wedding of one of the daughters. The family is only slightly more dysfunctional than ones I observed around me in Co Louth; for some reason Meath families were more normal. The eldest sister looks after her father and Uncle George, just about managing on her father’s pension from being a District Judge. Another sister is an alcoholic living in London, the bride is a good pianist but seems rather simple and the brother (Casimir) lives in Hamburg, perhaps married to Helga. Casimir, played by David Dawson, stole the show. A running joke in the play is his attempts to put a call through to Helga in Hamburg via the postmistress in Ballybeg, Mrs Moore.
The play is set in the 1970s when it was written. It is funny and sad. The decaying house reflects the fortunes of the family and Friel unflinchingly examines their relationships with each other and the local Catholic community – not a Prod in sight in the play. As so often Shakespeare gets to the nub of it: “ when sorrows come, they come not single spies. But in battalions!” Of course it’s all make-believe, there wasn’t a drop of rain.
It is an excellent, thought-provoking play – a subtle portrayal of class and society. Three things were less than perfect. The person in the standing row behind me breathed down the back of my neck throughout, the seats in the Circle are uncomfortable and gave me a pain in the neck and the cast’s Irish accents were very uneven. Surprisingly the lady in front of me left in the interval because she couldn’t understand the accents – they were inconsistent but there was no real Donegal patois which would certainly have flummoxed me.