Four Nights In the Green Bar­row Pub is the third of Cas­san­dra Tse’s shows I’ve seen, and each one was wild­ly dif­fer­ent from the oth­ers.  M’La­dy had me in stitch­es, The Aliens, in tears.  Four Nights, though, took me down mem­o­ry lane.

Hav­ing a hun­dred noisy musi­cal Irish cousins of my own, I was prob­a­bly always going to be delight­ed by this show.  The moment I walked into the room and heard the band play­ing that famil­iar music, it felt like a home­com­ing.  My child­hood sound­track was at least half Dublin­ers and Irish Rovers and Mary Black, and, like many oth­ers in the audi­ence, it proved too dif­fi­cult to resist singing along at points.  Lit­er­al­ly, in the upstairs room of JJ Mur­phy’s, which could have been any Irish pub in any city in the world, we almost instant­ly felt wel­come, like any oth­er punter, hav­ing a pint and a sing with strangers who’d soon be friends.

Dar­ragh Green runs the pub, inher­it­ed from his father and his father before him.  He serves beer and whiskey to the same reg­u­lars every night, and his sis­ter Ais­ling sings with the band, Irish music only.  It’s look­ing like this might be it for the rest of his life.  His par­ents’ ghosts are in every cor­ner; the ancient menus and the board games and the bel­lowed out­rage from the reg­u­lars when­ev­er he tries to sug­gest doing some­thing dif­fer­ent.  And so the pub, with all its warmth and humour and music and love, has become a kind of cage for Dar­ragh.

Until Arad, in town on busi­ness, walks in and shakes every­thing up.

The cast are mar­vel­lous.  Fin­lay Lan­ge­laan’s Dar­ragh is quick with a come­back, hard-work­ing and gen­er­ous, but also brit­tle with exhaus­tion.  Lan­ge­laan per­fect­ly por­trays a young man who’s tried so hard and for so long to be a good son that now it’s the only thing he knows how to do.  Being gay is not a real part of his life…  he’s out, but that just does­n’t mean any­thing when there are pints to pour and the tap’s clogged again.

Aimee Sul­li­van as Ais­ling is the total oppo­site.  Out and proud, bois­ter­ous and argu­men­ta­tive, she dom­i­nates every moment she’s giv­en.  It’s hard to tell whether Ais­ling’s gen­uine­ly that abra­sive, or if it’s a lin­ger­ing habit, her response to her father’s dis­ap­proval, just as Dar­ragh’s has been to com­ply and con­form.  Sul­li­van some­how adds sub­tle soft­ness to bal­ance a char­ac­ter who might oth­er­wise have been car­toon­ish.

The pub­’s reg­u­lars are Glen­don (Ralph John­son) and Nuala (Hilary Nor­ris), mar­ried 50 years and pre­sum­ably fight­ing the whole time, and Caitlin (Karen Anslow), qui­et and thought­ful, maybe a lit­tle slow, but gen­uine­ly car­ing.  I’m pret­ty sure they’re all hav­ing enor­mous fun with this show, and they pro­vid­ed borh depth and live­li­ness.  John­son and Nor­ris embod­ied their parts with no effort at all, bick­er­ing con­stant­ly, treat­ing Dar­ragh with casu­al thought­less­ness but mean­ing well. Anslow pro­vid­ed pause, and peace, and a cou­ple of the sweet­est moments in the show.

Alex Rabi­na was Arad, Mus­lim, bisex­u­al, cocky as all hell but with a sim­i­lar fragili­ty to Dar­ragh.  While Dar­ragh is at a per­ma­nent stand­still, Arad nev­er stays in one place.  Unwel­come at home, he trav­els con­stant­ly, telling him­self it’s what he wants.  Rabi­na was com­plete­ly endear­ing as Arad (though I could­n’t fig­ure out the accent.…  was it Amer­i­can?) and I was gen­uine­ly sad when he left.

I also want to hat-tip the band; Emi­ly Grif­fiths, Michael Steb­bings, and Thomas Wha­ley were excel­lent, and far more sup­port­ing char­ac­ters than mere back­ground.

This was a love sto­ry, sure, but it was a lot more.  It was polit­i­cal, as any­thing with LGBT+ themes is, espe­cial­ly set in Catholic Ire­land.  But it was also a sto­ry about accept­ing the flaws in the fam­i­ly we have, and lov­ing them any­way, recog­nis­ing the val­ue of the fam­i­ly we choose, and lov­ing our­selves.   I feel like Cas­san­dra Tse has a knack for very human moments, the moments when cracks appear in a facade, where char­ac­ters have to choose a new direc­tion and every­thing’s scary.  Tse takes those moments and cel­e­brates them, and that’s a very joy­ful thing to watch.

Basi­cal­ly it was freak­ing love­ly and I would hap­py see it again.  It’s on for anoth­er sev­en nights and I strong­ly rec­om­mend it to any­one, but espe­cial­ly if you’ve got a wee bit of the Irish in you.