Review: 'The Ferryman' Is Exhilarating

Jez Butterworth's new family drama is an explosive, immersive experience that manages to be both mythic in scope and yet completely grounded in the everyday. It's a finely crafted piece of writing that sets up every small turn in the plot, and an extraordinarily well-realized production that uses sharp observations to make this family, the Carneys, feel like they are people you know as well as you know your own family.

It's a thriller, kind of, and though it can teeter on the edge of melodrama, the play is also a meditation on longing for something — a way of life, a person — that's disappeared or is about to.

It also tries to answer the question: Why do revenge cycles keep perpetuating? Why can't people just stop? The answer: Because they're human beings dealing with other human beings.

These particular humans live in Northern Ireland in the 1980s. It's the time of the "Troubles," the seemingly endless cycle of violence between Catholics, Protestants and the English government. There's a hunger strike underway by a group of Irish prisoners against British policies. And in the prologue to the play, we learn that in one of the rural marshes, the body of an IRA member who may have betrayed the paramilitary group to the British has been found, 10 years after he disappeared.

The rest of the play takes place in the ramshackle home of the Carneys, during the fall harvest. The dead man was the brother of the head of the household, Quinn (Paddy Considine), and the husband of Caitlin (Laura Donnelly), who lives with the family. There are children's drawings everywhere, because the house is filled with children (there are seven of them on stage, plus an extraordinary live baby). And we know from the beginning that these children may be in danger. We just don't know how much.

Yet this is not a chilly or bitter story, but a warm, funny and poignant set of overlapping and interwoven tales that combine into a bountiful tapestry. We learn all about this family's secrets: their love affairs, their political convictions, their daily squabbles, how they each like to dance.

Director Sam Mendes creates an almost cinematic realism here, despite a few supernatural elements. It shows in choices like the live baby — plus there's also live rabbits and a goose. But it's also apparent in the acting, which is observant and drawn from life. In one scene, we know a character is desperately drunk not because he slurs, but because he stops walking for a second and subtly re-orients himself. In another, we understand the relationship between Caitlin and Quinn because of the way they look at each other.

"The Ferryman" is almost 3 and a half hours, but don't let that deter you. Think of it more like binge watching. After its stunning conclusion, you'll feel full and satisfied. This production is extraordinary — don't miss it.

 "The Ferryman" by Jez Butterworth, directed by Sam Mendes. At the Bernard B. Jacob's Theatrein an open run.