Following on from last year's brilliant Sive, Garry Hynes's heroic campaign to renovate the reputation of playwright John B Keane - mainly known as the purveyor of crowd-pleasing country comedies - continues with this inspired production of his macabre 1960 folk drama. The plot is fairly simple and the themes are familiar ones for Keane, and indeed for all Irish writing: land ownership and the search for love.
Following the death of widower Donal Conlee, his daughter Trassie struggles to keep hold of the farm for herself and her simple brother Neelus, while entertaining the attentions of the handsome wandering thatcher Peader Minogue. Things get weirder with the entrance of Trassie's nemesis, her land-grubbing cousin Dinzie Conlee, a paraplegic "humpbacked ferret from hell" who makes his way around the countryside on the back of his barely sentient brother, Jack.
This two-headed monster has clearly swum up from the depths of a suppressed Irish pagan tradition. However, Hynes also exploits a strong current of European expressionism: in their sick interdependence, Dinzie and Jack echo Pozzo and Lucky. The production runs with these cues for stylisation, creating a world that is equal parts Edward Gorey and the cantina scene from Star Wars. In the gallingly grotesque wake scene, biddies in white makeup, dark lipstick and too-tall hats mingle with faceless crones shrouded in brown robes, as Dinzie, like a lamed stick insect, dangles almost sexually over the corpse. The climax is an elemental hand-to-hand battle, and here, plot points that might have seemed implausible in a less imaginative production (would hearty Trassie really be defenceless against the crawling Dinzie?) fit into the heightened melodrama.
As ever, Hynes casts impeccably. Among a company of great new discoveries (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor, Michael Fitzgerald) and well-known actors in flying form (Catherine Walsh, Tom Hickey, David Herlihy), Frankie McCafferty may have found the role of a lifetime with his astonishing Dinzie.
Druid Theatre Company continues to set the Irish standard with impeccably detailed production values, down to the cheesy spotlight trailing crank healer Pats Bo Bwee. On opening night, emotional levels weren't completely in control - too much shouting rendered some passages unintelligible, and the love scene between Trassie and Peader felt hesitant - but things seem sure to even out in the course of this production's deservedly lengthy tour.
· Until September 20. Box office: 00 353 91 569 777. Then touring.
