It’s a been a long time since we heard from Conor McPherson: aside from his 2020 adaptation of Uncle Vanya (which was prematurely closed by the pandemic), the great Irish playwright’s last original work was his Bob Dylan musical Girl from the North Country, which premiered at the Old Vic in 2017. McPherson returns to the venerable theatrre with what is, astonishingly, his first new straight-up play since 2013’s The Night Alive.
Directed by McPherson himself, The Brightening Air star Chris O’Dowd as Dermot, a man who returns to his family home in County Sligo during the ’80s to join up with his siblings – played by Brian Gleeson and Rosie Sheehy – who need his help in clinging on to the threatened house.
We don’t know a lot beyond that, although McPherson’s work typically includes haunting metaphysical flourishes that speak to a world beyond ours, even if this can often be relatively subtle.
