The Brightening Air review at The Old Vic London review

Set in the doldrums of pre-Celtic Tiger 80s Ireland, this beautiful, often moving ensemble piece owes an acknowledged debt to Chekhov in parading unhappy people who are rooted in a place that stifles them, desperately reaching for a life beyond.

Yet these folk feuding over love and inheritance in rural Sligo could only hail from a country with intermingled beliefs of ancient magic and institutionalised religion.

Rosie Sheehy as Billie and Brian Gleeson as Stephen in The Brightening Air. (Image: Manuel Harlan) The plot, such as it is, hinges around a wife seeking water from a fairy well to restore her faithless husband’s love, and a defrocked blind priest returning to claim the farm where he grew up.

It’s owned by his late brother’s children, O’Dowd’s done-well cafe owner Dermot, Brian Gleeson’s heroically stoic – and stuck – Stephen, and Rosie Sheehy’s vulnerable, autistic Billie.

A twist on the savant character of many an Irish drama she drops devastating truth bombs into relationships yet is heartbreakingly floored by her self-sabotaging impulses.

Also superb is Hannah Morrish as Dermot’s lovelorn wife Lydia who may be bewitched by unwanted desire, or mired in a dysfunctional Catholic marriage, or both.

Dermot has latched onto Aisling Kearns’ enigmatic Freya, a girl half his age “in her twenties, well twenty…next year,” who is possibly a changeling, an enchantress or just a neglected teen latching onto men who can support her.

And it turns out Sean McGinley’s Pierre, accompanied by his pragmatic housekeeper (Derbhle Crotty) and experiencing what may or not be a miracle, is also seeking a new berth.

Billie dreams of taking a train to Varanasi where those who die and are washed in the Ganges are freed from the cycle of re-birth – yet there’s a neat cosmic Karma when the detestable Dermot’s betrayals reap earthly humiliation.

Rae Smith’s down at heel farmhouse set captures the musty, decades-old decor while the fluttering of silk and Japanese screens suggest a life beyond.

McPherson also directs, and while the first half is a thoroughly enjoyable masterclass in storytelling, and believable sibling sparring, the second gets bogged down in tangled themes of philosophy, mysticism and faith.

Perhaps an independent eye might have charted a clearer path through, but it’s always a pleasure to be back in the company of McPherson’s characters.

The Brightening Air runs at The Old Vic in Waterloo until June 14.