The FERRYMAN - Domestic Unrest in the Early 1981 Ireland Amidst IRA Dissension

The FERRYMAN playing on Broadway is a recent transport from the London stage.  The British collaboration of playwright Jez Betterworth ("Jerusalem) and director Sam Mendes ("American Beauty") is an ambitious production set in the home of a large Irish family set in rural N. Ireland 1981.  The prologue & setting reference Republican inmates on a hunger strike protesting they be recognized as political prisoners denied by Prime Minister Thatcher.  The violent revolts by the IRA serve merely as an undertow to a domestic play of a huge farming family headed by Quinn Carney.  Quinn & his wife Mary have 7 children.  Adding to this overflowing household are an uncle, aunts, nephews, field hand and  Quinn's sister-in-law, Caitlin & her son. Caitlin & her son had moved in after her husband went missing a decade ago.  Stopping into the household at all odd hours is the feeble priest, Father Horrigan and a menacing Muldoon; the presumed leader of the resistance and the town itself.  Quinn's brother's corpse has just been discovered in the bawg with a bullet in his skull.  Muldoon coerces the Father to communicate this discovery to Quinn without indicating the death was a murder.  There's a cornucopia of drama, drinking, secrets, shenanigans and resentments that carry on within the Carney clan.  The lengthy 3 hour play is convoluted and a complex mixture of components.  The Carney family works hard, drinks heavily and celebrates joyously.  The dancing following the harvest uplifts an otherwise sombre play.  Quinn's wife Mary feigns illness which is caused by a broken heart realizing her husband's affections lie with Caitlin.  Aunt Maggie Far Away is mostly comatose until she rouses and reveals bloody battles and lascivious longings for an unrequited love much to the entertainment of the 4 sisters.  Uncle Patrick is in the background except when he reads aloud from Virgil.  Muldoon appears as an ominous thug who threatens and provides for those in the parish while the Priest remains hapless.  Tom Kettle, a dimwitted field hand has an identical storyline to Steinbeck's  Lenny from "Of Mice and Men".   Somehow strewn altogether the combined elements in "The Ferryman" creates an intoxicating brew but one that casts confusion like a lingering hangover.  "The gates of hell are open night or day; smooth the descent, and easy is the way. But to return, and view the cheerful skies, In this task the mighty labor lies."  (Virgil)