Silas Marner

MARY Elizabeth Burke Kennedy has fashioned what seems a worthily faithful rendition of George Eliot's moral tale for the Storytellers…

MARY Elizabeth Burke Kennedy has fashioned what seems a worthily faithful rendition of George Eliot's moral tale for the Storytellers company and, as their title implies, they tell the tale well. But they are confronted, particularly in the first act, with some theatrically intractable and dramatically inert material. Ms Eliot, after all, did not write for the stage, and a lively and generally competent cast must leap in and out of character to supplement the dialogue with at least a skeleton of the novelist's narrative. Andrew Hinds's actively busy direction does not, in this instance, overcome the dramatic inertia and, more dangerously, does not encourage such character development as might be available from the text.

Only when Lalor Roddy's Silas - a nicely subdued external performance driven by a palpable internal dramatic energy - is on stage does one feel gripped by real theatre. Only in the second act, when Mr Roddy's lonely weaver is allowed to become really central to the action as he finds and fosters poor dead Molly's abandoned baby and moves on to win recognition of the wrongs done to both Molly and himself, does the evening become a drama rather than a staged novel.

Melanie MacHugh adds a pert liveliness as the foundling and there is solid enough support from Michael Devaney as the errant Godfrey and from Siobhan Miley, Cathy Belton, Conor Grimes and Pepe Roche in a variety of less clearly limned characters.

The director's stage design is necessarily sparse for a production that is to tour diverse stages in Derry, Kilkenny, Cork, Limerick, Sligo, Tralee and Galway, but Carol Betera and Kathy Kavanagh have produced admirable costumes and Ciara McCarthy's lighting is effective.