Aristocrats

In a rural community in Ireland, the Catholic, once-wealthy O'Connell family molders in their decaying mansion. Outsiders on two fronts, they're amongst predominantly Protestant gentry, and they keep their distance from the lower class Catholics of the village. All have broken lives. Their father is now an invalid and seldom makes an appearance; daughter Judith (Catherine Byrne) has given up a child born out of wedlock and returned in shame to care for her father; son Casimir (Mark Lambert) goes in and out of fantasy and relives the past; Alice (Donna Dent), who married a working class bloke, Eamon (Frank McCusker), lives in London and has Laken to drink; Claire (Alison McKenna) whose career as a promising pianist was squelched by her father, will soon marry a much older, unattractive man. It is Eamon, the outsider, who tries to bring reality to bear on the house and family. But, given the circumstances, it will probably be a lost cause. When the father dies, leaving the home to two of his children, they cannot keep it for they lack the means to maintain it. Performances are uniformly excellent, with highest honors going to Mark Lambert, Donna Dent, Frank McCusker, Catherine Byrne, and Alison McKenna. Ben Barnes has done a fine job of maintaining the emotional tension, which reverberates throughout the play.

In Aristocrats, Brian Friel draws one into this story of pain and loss, of a not-so bygone time (the play is set in the 1970s). There might be parallels to Chekhov, but Friel has his own distinctive style as well as milieu. Aristocrats is a deeply moving experience.