Review

Theatre: Maeve’s House

The Irish-American writer, Maeve Brennan, was raised in Cherryfield Avenue, Ranelagh, in the 1920s and early 1930s. Two decades later, Eamon Morrissey lived in the same house, his parents having purchased it from the Brennans, who left for America when Maeve was 17. In his new one-man show, Morrissey uses this coincidence as a springboard for a tribute to Brennan, an affecting rumination on memory and the concept of ‘home’.

Performing extracts from Brennan’s short stories, and her columns for The New Yorker, Morrissey balances comedy and pathos. He raises laughter with ease, yet he ventures into dark matters, too — his old home featured in Brennan’s short stories, as a scaffold for her dark, melancholy domestic dramas.

The actor’s memories of this house are bound up with the fictions that Brennan projected into it, and when Morrissey channels lonely Brennan characters like Mr and Mrs Deardon, memory and fantasy collide. This has fascinating potential, but director Gerard Stembridge and Morrissey don’t hunt it down, preferring subtlety and restraint.

Morrissey recounts his meeting with Brennan, in New York in 1966, and tells her of his mother’s affection for her stories. Morrissey’s mother was also Maeve, and in that one can glimpse meaning the play does not fully reveal.

In his homage to Brennan, Morrissey doesn’t foster the ghosts of his own past for long.

A direct reckoning with his own emotional investment in the house might have proved rewarding.

Nevertheless, with its huge charm, humour, and subtle gravitas, Maeve’s House is affecting theatre.

Star Rating: 4/5