PUTTING MAIRTIN O Cadhain's bitchy, biting expose of the valley of the squinting windows on stage was always going to be a problematic affair the novel is built around a series of conversations in a graveyard and does not easily lend itself to a dramatic interpretation.
The strength of Macdara O Fltharta's masterful adaptation lies more in the wonderful richness of the curses, pleas and sarcastic jibes the characters hurl at each other than in any sense of building to a climax in the conventional sense. Voices from the graveyard they may well be very few people under the age of 40 now command the same, muchness of expression in Irish as Caitriona Phaidin (Brid Ni Neachtain) or Tomas Taobh Istigh (Peadar Lamb) but they struck many a chord amongst a large and very appreciative audience last night in Spideal. A Dublin audience just wouldn't get the jokes or understand half the curses, and this is where this reviewer was made painfully aware off his linguistic shortcomings.
Brid Ni Neachtain is superb as the strong, vindictive woman tormented by family jealousies. If you can imagine Janis Joplin as a Connemara woman, singin' her blues through a hundred years of peasant bitterness and spilling it all out in a rough, rasping voice, then you have some idea of her performance. None of the other actors camel within an asses roar of her, as they say here, although Maire Ni Ghrainne was amusing as the culture vulture Nora Sheainin and Breandan O Duill fitted well into the role of the sentimental schoolmaster. Macdara O Fatharta seems a bit typecast in the role of the village idiot, however the gestures and shuffles seem wearily familiar.
