"Property, land, money. That's all she ever thought of." The dying words of a disaffected son provide a useful synopsis of Tom Murphy's new play. While its source is a 19th-century Russian novel - The Golovlyov Family, by Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin - its contemporary Irish resonances are amplified to highlight greed and the hollowness of religious hypocrisy. The setting of Conall Morrison's ambitious production is poised unspecifically between Russia and Ireland, but as a morality tale, this is thumping with home truths.
The tyrant of the title is the matriarch Arina, who married out of the peasantry, acquiring wealth and status. In Marie Mullen's defiant portrayal, her reluctance and regret are more for the loss of her power than for her original decision. When she divides her kingdom between her two sons, she is forced to confront the effects of her dominance. Frank McCusker is the taciturn, undervalued son Paul, declaring as he dies that his mother has sold her soul, while Declan Conlon's Peter masks a sinister streak beneath unctuous piety.
The play's sprawling form encompasses the extended family, servants and serfs, chronicling the estate's decline over a 10-year period. A firmer hand in adapting the novel would have jettisoned its overblown exposition and repetitive speeches.
The opening scenes nod towards the blunt signposting of Brechtian epic theatre, but Morrison's direction is most effective when it creates richer imagery. In a series of choreographed tableaux, family ghosts appear on the upper levels of Tom Piper's tiered wooden set, delicately hatched with light by Ben Ormerod. In the lyricism of these moments we are given the subtle layers that the text's reiteration misses.
