The play opens in a rural Irish pub with Brendan, the publican and Jack, a car mechanic and garage owner. These two begin to discuss their respective days and are soon joined by Jim. The three then discuss Valerie, a pretty young woman from Dublin who has just rented an old house in the area. Finbar, a businessman, arrives with Valerie, and the play revolves around reminiscences and banter. After a few drinks, the group begin telling stories with a supernatural slant, related to their own experience or those of others in the area, and which arise out of the popular preoccupations of Irish folklore: ghosts, fairies and mysterious happenings. After each man has told a story, Valerie tells her own: the reason why she has left Dublin. Valerie's story is melancholy and undoubtedly true, with a ghostly twist which echoes the earlier tales, and shocks the men who become softer, kinder, and more real. There is the hint that the story may lead to salvation and, eventually, a happy ending for two of the characters. Finbar and Jim leave, and in the last part of the play, Jack's final monologue is a story of personal loss which, he comments, is at least not a ghostly tale but in some ways is nonetheless about a haunting. The building of a hydroelectric dam, or weir, on a local waterway many years before is mentioned early in the conversation.
Characters
Jack, a mechanic and garage owner in his fifties.
Brendan, the owner of the pub in which the play is set. He is in his thirties.
Jim, Jack's assistant, in his forties.
Finbar Mack, a local businessman in his late forties.
Reviews of The Weir have been positive. It won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play of 1997–98. In addition, McPherson won the Critics' Circle Award as the most promising playwright in 1998 as a direct result of the success of The Weir. The play has received lofty praise, such as "beautifully devious," "gentle, soft-spoken, delicately crafted work," and "this is my play of the decade...a modern masterpiece." The Weir was voted one of the 100 most significant plays of the 20th Century in a poll conducted by the Royal National Theatre, London. It tied at 40th place with Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh, Samuel Beckett's Endgame and Arthur Miller's A View From The Bridge. The Guardian critic, Michael Billington, listed The Weir as one of the 101 greatest plays of all time in his 2015 book 'The 101 Greatest Plays: From Antiquity to the Present'
