Molly Sweeney

REVIVAL

For the eponymous middle-aged woman (Cara Kelly) in Brian Friel’s play the rituals of everyday life are suddenly and irreversibly disrupted when, having been blind for her entire life, her sight is restored. What emerges from all this is that the project of making her sighted is as much, if not more of a passion for her husband (Michael Glenn Murphy), whose capacity for one monomaniac project after another has traced his history and an eye surgeon haunted by emotional failure and alcohol (Oengus MacNamara) as it is for Molly.

Stephen Thompson’s revival of this 2005 hit at the Citz carries the same emotional weight and richness of ideas as its earlier incarnation. It has an astonishing, subtle and nuanced performance from Kelly at the centre as a woman whose independence and contentedness is eroded by circumstances that only an outsider would consider fortuitous. Murphy and MacNamara are also strong in an intriguing and powerful character study of incomplete people in small town Ireland.