Josie Rourke has a hit at last with The Weir, The Tempest: a karaoke version of all

The Weir is the ultimate hit-from-nowhere. It was written in 1997 by the 26-year-old Conor McPherson. It opened at the Royal Court Upstairs and glided over to Broadway and then toured America. The script defies every rule of theatrical physics. It’s wordy and static, it’s entirely devoid of action or spectacle, and the atmosphere is mired in gloom.

Four morose drinkers, stuck in a pub in the west of Ireland, try to impress a pretty incomer from Dublin by telling her ghost stories. Nothing else happens. The faint stirring of a romance between the Dublin girl and the handsome deadbeat behind the bar provides a tiny note of optimism at the end. And yet McPherson is a miracle-worker. As the clock ticks, as the beer flows, as the garrulous bumpkins natter away, a magical transformation takes place, and one’s indifference is converted into fascinated involvement. The pub is a mythical haven at the end of the rainbow; it’s the seaside resort you left in adolescence; it’s the small town you’ll return to when your days are done; it has the dependable welcoming deadness of every rural backwater; and its emotional paralysis is both its curse and its allure.

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There are great performances in this understated, beautifully judged production. Ardal O’Hanlon’s favourite routine as an idiot-savant serves him well in the role of Jim, the taciturn bachelor who worships his ailing mum. Peter McDonald, a brooding, closed-off actor, finds the right note of dourness for Brendan, the stoical barman who tends his post like a war hero in a foxhole. Risteárd Cooper is marvellously skilful as the dapper and calculating Finbar, a local boy made good, whose true intentions towards Dervla Kirwan’s Valerie are drawn with brilliant uncertainty. And best of all is Brian Cox, a lone Scot in an all-Irish cast, whose accent is as thick as double cream left out in the sun.