The Brightening Air: a 'gripping' family drama

Rosie Sheehy as Billie sits at a table while Brian Gleeson as Stephen sits behind her, scowling

Rosie Sheehy as Billie and Brian Gleeson as Stephen

(Image credit: Manuel Harlan)

published 2 May 2025

The acclaimed Irish playwright Conor McPherson's last original straight play was in 2013, and so the opening of "The Brightening Air", which returns him as writer-director to the Old Vic (where his acclaimed Bob Dylan musical "Girl from the North Country" premiered in 2017), feels like a "major theatrical event", said Dzifa Benson in The Daily Telegraph. Haunting and very funny, it is set in rural Sligo in the early 1980s, where Stephen (Brian Gleeson) and his sister Billie (Rosie Sheehy) still live in their crumbling family home, and seem likely to die there until relations arrive to disrupt their "self-made rut".

The play, which has (acknowledged) echoes of Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya", veers into the numinous and the supernatural, said Nick Curtis in The London Standard. There's "a religious revelation, an apparent miracle and the smiting of the unworthy. There's even a cosmic joke at the end." It may not be to all tastes, but I "bloody loved it".

Fitfully, the play is "utterly wondrous", said Sarah Crompton on WhatsOnStage – "elevated by commanding performances from the entire cast". Sheehy is "devastating" as the eccentric and autistic Billie. Gleeson brings "troubled depth and underlying anger" to the passive, put-upon Stephen. And Chris O'Dowd is superb as their older, wealthier brother Dermot – leaning into his character's "monstrous self-absorption, timing each line for maximum impact". But McPherson crams in too much. There isn't enough room to breathe between the twists and revelations, which makes this "gripping" play ultimately frustrating: "so nearly great, so nearly soaring, yet somehow held earthbound by the weight of its intent".

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It has plenty of charm, and some "searing moments", said Arifa Akbar in The Guardian. But the evening could do with "more momentum and emotional drive". It's not that anything rings false in McPherson's "delicious dialogue", said Dominic Maxwell in The Times. The problem is that "changes happen a tad too slowly in the first half, a tad too quickly in the second". But even if the play doesn't quite add up, "it's far more interesting than plenty of plays that do".