Jez Butterworth’s new play The Ferryman is set in Armagh in 1981. Quinn, a former terrorist, has swapped the armed struggle for a farming career and now lives with his sick wife, their countless kids, his sister-in-law and her only son. But the IRA, who murdered his brother as punishment for his disloyalty, are due to pay a visit with unknown intentions. More violence, perhaps? Protection money? Or both. Well, neither, it turns out. They merely want Quinn to refrain from blaming his brother’s death on them. Rather a low price to ask. And yet Quinn is willing to defy them even though he knows they repay disobedience with murder, and he now has a dozen vulnerable dependents to protect.
These plot elements don’t quite stack up. And the tone is more sentimental than in Butterworth’s hit play Jerusalem, which was crammed with hilarious comedy. Here the idiom is honey-glazed rural whimsy.
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