3rd February 2021: The Weir and Master Class

This month we will be reading two short plays. 

The Weir

By Conor McPherson

The play opens in a rural Irish pub with Brendan, the publican and Jack, a car mechanic and garage owner. These two begin to discuss their respective days and are soon joined by Jim. The three then discuss Valerie, a pretty young woman from Dublin who has just rented an old house in the area.

Finbar, a businessman, arrives with Valerie, and the play revolves around reminiscences and banter. After a few drinks, the group begin telling stories with a supernatural slant, related to their own experience or those of others in the area, and which arise out of the popular preoccupations of Irish folklore: ghosts, fairies and mysterious happenings.

After each man (except Brendan) has told a story, Valerie tells her own: the reason why she has left Dublin,  with a ghostly twist which echoes the earlier tales, and shocks the men. 

Characters

• Jack, a mechanic and garage owner in his fifties.
• Brendan, the owner of the pub in which the play is set. He is in his thirties.
• Jim, Jack's assistant, in his forties.
• Finbar Mack, a local businessman in his late forties.
• Valerie, a Dublin woman in her thirties.

Master Class

By Terrence McNally

The opera diva Maria Callas, a glamorous, commanding, larger-than-life, caustic, and surprisingly funny pedagogue is holding a singing master class. Alternately dismayed and impressed by the students who parade before her, she retreats into recollections about the glories of her own life and career. Included in her musings are her younger years as an ugly duckling, her fierce hatred of her rivals, the unforgiving press that savaged her early performances, her triumphs at La Scala, and her relationship with Aristotle Onassis. It culminates in a monologue about sacrifice taken in the name of art.