No joy in this carol
By Robert Tanitch - 19/12/2011
Trafalgar Studios As we all know Christmas is not the best of times for the lonely. Conor McPherson, who wrote The Weir, a series of masterly ghost stories, sets his 70-minute play in a funeral parlour on Christmas Eve. McPherson has been quoted as saying that death is the only thing worth writing about. A lonely, middle-aged Irish undertaker (with a drink problem) has, like Scrooge, to face up to his ghosts. He learns from his daughter, whom he has not seen in 10 years, that his estranged wife is dying in hospital and wants to see him. There are three characters; but Dublin Carol is essentially a cheerless monologue and the story McPherson has to tell is less than riveting and redemption, unlike Scrooge, seems highly unlikely.
DUBLIN CAROL