Conor McPherson's The Weir

鍾照妍

摘要

     Conor McPherson’s play The Weir is set in a bar in rural Ireland with 5 main characters. Jack tells a ghost story about Bridie, a widow who always hears and sees things that other people are unable to see. Bridie’s story reveals that her house was built on a fairy road, which explains for all the midnight knocking and the sound of footsteps constantly through her house. Finbar tells a ghost story about Niamh seeing a woman on the stairs after playing the Ouija board. One night, when Finbar returned to his own house, he was unable to go to bed because he also thought there was something on the stairs. Jim tells a story concerning the ghost of a man he met while digging graves. The man, who Jim thought was a relative who came to pay respects, was actually the sexual pervert who townsmen despised. He asked Jim bury him next to a little girl he harassed. Afterwards, Valerie, the newcomer in the town tells her own story about losing her beloved girl. Her daughter was drowned in the pool, and Valerie could not accept the fact that her daughter was dead. One day, she got a phone call from her dead daughter, asking her mom come and collect her, which made Valerie collapsed. The ghost stories vivify the loneliness that disturbs and haunts the townsfolk in rural Ireland. Through the monologue of each protagonist in the play, McPherson presents the lives of Irish people and accentuates their needs for the warmth, support and company from the outside world to ease their isolation and loneliness.