Heart and home

Tom Murphy’s The House exposes the returning emigrant’s frail sense of place, says Pádraic Killeen

PROFOUNDLY sad, yet laced with black comedy, the Abbey Theatre’s revival of Tom Murphy’s play The House is a major production this summer.

Set in 1950s Ireland, the plot hinges on the auction of an idyllic estate and the attempt of a returned emigrant, Christy (Declan Conlon), to purchase it. Christy is from the ‘wrong side of the tracks’ but has made money in England, albeit by indecent means. Returning to his hometown during the ‘builders’ holidays’, like his friends and fellow emigrants Peter (Frank Laverty) and Goldfish (Karl Shiels), Christy is alarmed to learn that the De Burca family — the elegant remnants of an old Ascendancy clan — are auctioning their estate. In awe of the De Burcas since childhood, Christy wants to buy the house to preserve his own dreams of home, of identity, and of a cherished innocence. All that stands in the way is grim and unforgiving reality.