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.