In a remote part of Donegal in 1943 the West family is bringing the war back home to neutral Ireland. Elder daughter Esther exudes the dangerous discontent of a woman who hasn't married for love. Younger daughter Dolly feeds the family, but neglects her own emotional hunger and love for the Englishman Alec; and son Justin, an officer in the Irish army, is an uptight bigot, prepared to justify Ireland's neutrality in the war against Hitler because of his hatred of the English.
Into this already tense situation, the irrepressible, manipulative, benign matriarch Rima, a woman who cannot open her mouth without raising a belly laugh and causing her children discomfort, brings Alec and two American GIs stationed just over the border in Derry. One of the Americans, Marco, is a tough Bronx kid who is also gay.
This invasion of love, hate, different attitudes and perspectives changes the Wests' lives for ever. "Is the war over?" is the question at the end. Only in some ways, as the outbreak of peace marks the start of new struggles for the Wests and for Ireland, who must both come to terms with the scars of the past.
Frank McGuinness has written a bruiser of a play, solid and old-fashioned in that great Irish tradition that mixes sentimentality with punch and is both engrossing and blissfully funny. It works upon the consciousness like a singing kettle in a warm kitchen.
Not all of it works: Rima is hilarious but not entirely believable, Dolly's sudden rage against her sister is inexplicable and McGuinness's treatment of his characters and his emphasis on the good and bad in each of them is too even-handed to be totally satisfying. In the end you are more interested in the Wests themselves than in McGuinness's attempts to make them stand in as a metaphor for post-war Ireland.
But this is a terrific and chunky piece of West End theatre. Patrick Mason's production can do no wrong and the acting is so sure and true it brings a lump to the throat. Like Rima, McGuinness is a canny manipulator and a superb theatrical craftsman: in the silence before the audience's final roar of approval what you hear is the collective breaking of 1,000 hearts.
Until August 5. Box office: 020-7928 7616.
***** Unmissable **** Recommended *** Enjoyable ** Mediocre * Terrible
