The streets of Wexford form a self-contained world in Billy Roche’s memory play from 1993, in which reminders of the past are haunting rather than consoling. While Druid’s new production is lovingly nostalgic for the late 1980s, director Aaron Monaghan does not prettify the degrees of unhappiness experienced by its characters. Opening as the town’s traditional shoemakers’ shop is being handed over by its owner Terry (Garrett Lombard) to his young assistant Rory (Naoise Dunbar), this moment of generational change triggers a series of flashbacks.
Returning to the days when the shop’s staff formed the barbershop quartet of the play’s title, the four men create harmony in song that belies the tensions of their friendships. While they’re performing, all is forgotten: the ebullient Rory is joined by debonair, all-seeing Josie (Sean Kearns) and the tense Ted on piano (Tiernan Messitt-Greene), with Terry’s low, rumbling notes adding ballast. Beautifully performed, the songs, composed by Roche, are integral to this drama of lives interconnected through a largely unspoken history of betrayal and sexual infidelities.
A brooding presence, Terry is sinking into a depression that seems rooted in a combination of guilt and hurt. Even the two women in his life, Nuala (Éilish McLaughlin) and Breda (Amelia Crowley) – both masochistically determined to save him – can’t seem to reach him. In a compelling performance, Lombard succeeds in making this complicated, cruel but charming man sympathetic, even as fraying plot threads and multiple time lines threaten to muddy proceedings. What lingers are the soaring voices and vivid stage pictures designed by Ciaran Bagnall. Backlit and hazy, Josie swoops in, crooning Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, perfectly capturing this play’s distinctively sweet and sour tone.
At the Mick Lally theatre, Galway, until 5 June. Then touring Ireland until 2 July.
