Circle's Edge's “The Weir" at Pat & Fran's Irish Pub -- February 21 through March 2.
Friday, February 21, through Sunday, March 2
Pat & Fran's Irish Pub, 808 Fifth Street, Suite 8, Coralville IA
The 1999 winner of the United Kingdom's Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play, Conor McPherson's arresting and chilling drama The Weir enjoys a February 21 through March 2 run hosted by Circle's Edge, an offshoot of City Circle Theatre Company. Dedicated to immersive-theatre experiences, the company will stage McPherson's tavern-set tale in an actual Coralville tavern: Pat & Fran's Irish Pub.
Set in a small bar called The Weir, in a rural town in Ireland, McPherson's lauded hit finds three local men settling down for the night, enjoying good beer and company. Their normal routine is shaken up, however, when their friend Finland enters the bar and introduces them to Valerie, an attractive woman from Dublin who has just moved into an old haunted house in the town. As the night (and the amount of consumed liquor) progresses, each local from the bar starts to tell a tale of ghostly happenings in the town, and what starts as innocent braggadocio between the men turns into a genuine fright when Valerie reveals a real, haunted tale of her own from the past. Examining chances of missed opportunity and the loneliness that results in it, The Weir is a haunting play with its roots in Irish folklore, with The Guardian's Michael Billington including the title among the all-time best in his book The 101 Greatest Plays: From Antiquity to the Present.
Directing The Weir for Circle's Edge is Mary Rinderspacher, a City Circle Theatre Company veterans whose previous participation included appearing in Love, Loss, & What I Wore and its cabaret-revue equivalent Love, Loss, & What I Sang. Tara McGovern serves as the show's music director and Roxy Johnson its stage manager, and Rinderspacher's five-person ensemble is composed of Connor Hurley, Adam W. Nardini, Emily Palmer, Joe Roselund, and Rip Russell. Audiences are invited to come to Pat & Fran's early to place their food and drink orders while immersing themselves in the culture with live Irish music. Then, guests are welcome to sit back and enjoy McPherson's play as it transports them to a windswept pub in rural Ireland where the chill in the air isn’t just from the storm outside.
Circle's Edge's The Weir will be staged in Pat & Fran's Irish Pub from February 21 through March 2, with performances Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. Admission is $20, and more information and tickets are available by calling (319)248-9370 and visiting CoralvilleArts.org.
