When I received the mailer for the imminent Broadway transfer of Jez Butterworth’s The Ferryman from its London run, I was impressed to read that the new play had copped most of the awards the Brits give out for professional theater. I checked out some of the reviews the production received and saw that it garnered near-universal praise. It sure looked and sounded like something like something I couldn’t ignore, so I called my friend Diana and proposed we get seats if she was also interested and check out the production ourselves. I called Telecharge and booked a pair of seats for the 7:30 performance at Broadway’s Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre on Saturday evening, 27 October.
On Monday, 22 October, I heard Roma Torre of NY1, the proprietary news station of Spectrum cable service in New York City, praise the “richly stocked play” as “a gorgeous sprawling yarn that encompasses the entire spectrum of human existence.” Then, that afternoon, I read Ben Brantley’s laudatory notice in the New York Times. Brantley, calling the play “thrilling,” raved, “No matter what sort of spread you’ve planned for your Thanksgiving dinner, it won’t be a patch on the glorious feast that has been laid out” in Ferryman.
Now, I’ve often had differences with Brantley’s reviews, so I usually discount his more extreme assessments—raves or pans—and try to cherry-pick his descriptions. I wondered about this one, though, because of Torre’s enthusiastic review earlier—even though NY1 isn’t what I consider a major assessor of theater. But since the play got glowing reviews and took most of the theater awards in London, lots of people really liked it. I went to the theater with immense optimism that Saturday evening.
Boy, was I sorely disappointed! I was nowhere near as impressed as either Brantley or Torre. I hadn’t figured out exactly what to make of Ferryman yet, but my initial impression (after 3¼ hours) was that it’s a mess of a play, an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink script (except that there is a kitchen sink!). (The cast is something like 21 speaking actors—plus a 9-month-old infant.) The ending as a shocker, but pretty much comes out of nowhere. Oh, and Diana hated it. She said something about it being a “Trumpland” play—all violence and hatred. That’s sort of true, but the comparison’s way too simplistic to be useful or valid. But let’s back up a bit.
The Ferryman is set in County Armagh in Northern Ireland in 1981, during the worst of The Troubles. The 1981 hunger strike among IRA prisoners in Maze Prison (near Belfast) for the right to be classified as political prisoners began on 1 March. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher rejected the reclassification and by the summer, when the play is set, nine of the hunger-strikers, including the leader, Bobby Sands (who’d been elected to parliament in April), had died in the infamous H-Block. (Eventually, 10 would starve themselves to death.)
At the beginning of the play, we learn that the body of Seamus Carney, an IRA fighter who disappeared 10 years earlier, had just been accidentally uncovered, with a bullet hole in the back of his head, in a bog in the south. This is the catalyst that launches the events of The Ferryman—and lest you think it’s too much of a convenient coincidence, this story is the factual kernel that inspired the play.
In 2012, actress Laura Donnelly was working with Butterworth on The River (2014-15 on Broadway; also starring Hugh Jackman and Cush Jumbo). She and Butterworth, who are a couple, were watching a TV documentary about the “Disappeared” during the Troubles and she recognized a photo of her uncle, Eugene Simmons. Donnelly’s mother’s brother, Simmons had disappeared in 1981, the same year in which The Ferryman is set, and his body was found by a dog-walker in 1984. When the actress pointed this out to Butterworth, he was incredulous, and then began digging out some of the details in talks with Donnelly’s mother. Though he had long resisted writing a play about Northern Ireland, that tale of how the Simmons-Donnelly family coped in those interim years became the center of the drama of The Ferryman’s Carney clan, a family of former IRA fighters and supporters, then by 2016 had become Butterworth’s seventh play (he’s written about 10 produced screenplays as well, including the 2015 James Bond flick Spectre on which he collaborated with director Sam Mendes, who staged The Ferryman, plus several television projects), his first new stage work in five years.
The Ferrymanopened at the Royal Court Theatre on 24 April 2017 and ran until 20 May; it transferred to the West End’s Gielgud Theatre on 20 June 2017, closing on 19 May 2018. It won 2017 Evening Standard Theatre Awards for Best Play, Best Director (Mendes), and Emerging Talent (Tom Glynn-Carney, who plays Shane Corcoran); the play also won the 2018 Laurence Olivier Awards, the London equivalent to New York’s Tonys, for Best New Play, Best Actress (Donnelly as Caitlin Carney), and Best Director. The production garnered several other awards and nominations before moving to the Jacobs Theatre on 45th Street west of Broadway, beginning previews on 2 October 2018 and opening on 21 October for an open-ended run. Much of the original Royal Court and Gielgud casts traveled to the U.S. with the production (including Donnelly, playing a version of her own aunt, the wife whose husband’s fate was unknown for so long).
Jeremy “Jez” Butterworth was born in London in 1969. He has three brothers who are all in the film business: Tom and John-Henry are both writers and Steve is a producer. Jez and brothers Tom and John-Henry have collaborated on screenplays and Jez and John-Henry together won the Writers Guild of America’s 2011 Paul Selvin Award for their screenplay for the 2010 film Fair Game. Jez directed the 2001 film Birthday Girl, starring Nicole Kidman, which was co-written by Jez and Tom and produced by Steve.
Jez Butterworth’s break-out play was Mojo, which premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in 1995. It won the 1996 Laurence Olivier Award, an Evening Standard, Writer’s Guild, and Critic's Circle Award. Butterworth adapted the play for a 1997 film which featured playwright Harold Pinter, who became an important influence on the young dramatist’s work. He went on to write five more plays, including Jerusalem (2009) and The River (2012), both of which made the transfer across the Atlantic to play on Broadway (2011 and 2014 respectively). One of Butterworth’s recurring themes, as seen in both Jerusalemand The Ferryman is how history and events of the past, thought long buried, can determine events of the present.
At three hours and 15 minutes (including one intermission and one short break) and comprising 21 speaking parts (plus one babe-in-arms), the story of The Ferryman is too complicated to recap in detail here, as it would use up my allotted word-count with synopsis. It would also probably be too complicated to follow; it nearly was to see. (I also don’t want to spoil the horrendously surprise ending by describing it here!) So I’ll give a synopsis of a synopsis of the plot. (The text of The Ferryman was published in 2017 by the Theatre Communications Group.)
In a short prologue, set in Derry (aka: Londonderry) “a day or two earlier” than the rest of Ferryman, menacing IRA chieftain Muldoon (Stuart Graham) reveals to Father Horrigan (Charles Dale) the discovery of the body of Seamus Carney, who disappeared on New Year’s Day 1972 when he was 20 years old. Found in a peat bog in County Louth, just across the border with the Irish Republic, the corpse had had a bullet in the back of the head. The common belief is that Seamus had been executed in retaliation for his suspected defection from the IRA as a British informer. Caitlin Carney (Donnelly), Seamus’s widow, and their 14-year-old son, Oisin (Rob Malone), live on the farm of Seamus’s older brother, Quinn (Paddy Considine), in rural County Armagh—about 65 miles southeast of Derry.
Quinn Carney’s had his own involvement with the IRA, but left the struggle to devote himself to working the family farm and looking after his ailing wife Mary (Genevieve O’Reilly) and their seven children (Bobby, 9 months old – played by various infants; Honor, 7 – Matilda Lawler; Mercy, 9 – Willow McCarthy; Nunu, 11 – Brooklyn Shuck; Shena, 14 – Carla Langley; Michael, 15 – Fra Fee; JJ, 16 – Niall Wright); he’s long been silently in love with Caitlin. Also among the household are Quinn’s uncle Pat (Mark Lambert), a Virgil-quoting souse (the play’s title is a reference to Charon, the boatman who ferries the souls across the River Styx to the underworld in The Aeneid), and his aunts, Patricia (Dearbhla Molloy), a staunch and bitter Irish republican, and Maggie (Fionnula Flanagan), a gentle soul, known as Aunt Maggie Far Away, often lost in a world her own thoughts and memories with sporadic periods of lucidity in which she recounts family history and prophesies of the children’s futures. Also present is an English farmhand, Tom Kettle (Justin Edwards), a large, slow-witted man (think Lennie in Of Mice and Men) whose capacious pockets provide amusement for the younger Carneys.
As the family celebrates their harvest ritual with the help of three young cousins from Derry (Declan Corcoran, 13 – Michael Quinton McArthur; Diarmaid Corcoran, 16 – Conor MacNeill; Shane Corcoran, 17 – Tom Glynn-Carney), they find their lives upended by the arrival of Muldoon and his two henchmen, Frank Magennis (Dean Ashton) and Lawrence Malone (Glenn Speers), out to intimidate the Carneys from saying anything about Seamus’s death and the discovery of his body. The final confrontation, fed by anger and bitterness, leads to a horrible, tragic, and unlooked-for act.
As I begin writing this report, I still haven’t sorted out what the hell Butterworth is on about! The Irish Troubles are over (despite continuing tensions between the Irish and the English), so he must be making some point indirectly—but I don’t see it yet. Whatever it is, does it really require 21 characters and three-plus hours to make? I think there’s a lot of unnecessary mishegoss going on on the Jacobs stage—family stories, war stories, and tall tales; drinking bouts; songs; dances; and fights (the choreographer is Scarlett Mackmin and the fight directors are Terry King for the UK and Thomas Schall for the US). It all seems self-indulgent clichés that don’t advance a point (and some of which, like the excessive drinking, even among the teenagers and “wee-uns,” and the fighting, may even offend actual Irishmen and -women who see the play—Butterworth is, after all, English).
Everything was overstated, turned up to the max; out came the inevitable roll call of characters-cum-caricatures: the compromised priest, the bitter republican aunt (shades of James Joyce’s Catholic aunt, Dante Riordan, from Portrait of the Artist . . .), the alcoholic with the heart of gold and the menacing IRA men, who, in this instance, moved from silently threatening to the point of caricature. Then there’s the drinking: not just the alcoholic uncle, but the whiskey-slugging dad, the sozzled teenage sons and—wait for it—the children allowed thimblefuls of Bushmills for breakfast. Comedic, for sure, but so close to a cultural stereotype as to be offensive.
(The journalist, who’s actually from County Armagh, explains:
No one else seemed to mind the cliches and the stereotypes of Irishness abounding here: the relentless drinking, the references to fairies, the Irish dancing, the dodgy priest, the spinster aunts—or the sense that the play ties itself in knots tackling ideas of place, loyalty and community. Butterworth and Mendes fill the stage with noise, movement, songs and stories, but once that bravura energy had subsided, I was left with that familiar sense of unease, of dislocation. What I had witnessed, and in part enjoyed, was a play that revealed more about English attitudes to Ireland than it did about Northern Ireland.
(O’Hagan detailed several other disturbing references and lamented what they play could have been but wasn’t. Usually, I dismiss that kind of criticism—telling the writer what she or he should have written—and try to stick with examining what the playwright did write. In this instance, however, I had to sympathize with O’Hagan because, even though I’m not Irish—or even British—I had the same reaction, if somewhat less articulate or heartfelt. The IrishCentralwriter summed up O’Hagan’s discomfort by observing that The Ferryman “presents a caricature of the Irish, the worst possible depiction of them and plays to the stereotype of the drunk and fighting Irish so many British have.” Even I, outsider though I be, could feel that—maybe because I come from a people who are also frequently caricatured by others, usually for nefarious purposes.
(By the way: I didn’t discover the IrishCentral commentary or O’Hagan’s article until I began writing this report, weeks after seeing the play and forming my reaction. I’m reporting it here now because it coincides with something that stuck in my own craw almost three weeks ago.)
According to some critics and reviewers, the two central metaphors of The Ferryman are the burial place of Seamus Carney’s body and the harvest setting of the plot. Peat bogs are notorious for preserving bodies interred there. Magennis, one of the IRA enforcers, reminds Father Horrigan that “there’s no oxygen down there. The peat is acidic. It pickles you. The years roll by and nothing changes.” Seamus’s body was found virtually intact, watch, wallet, sneakers, bullet hole, and all, just as he was the day he died ten years earlier. Butterworth, the analysts say, is writing about the bitter harvest of long-ago hatreds and anger and how the present generation reaps what their predecessors planted. (The Atlanticheadline for its on-line review of the London mounting was “Jez Butterworth on the Legacy of Hate.”) The playwright reinforces his point by observing that the same bog that held Seamus Carney’s body has yielded up prehistoric corpses so well preserved that they bore clear evidence of centuries-old murders. We need only look at the conflicts between Israelis and Palestinians, Hindus and Indian Muslims, Turks and Kurds, which, like many other historical hostilities, are inherited by generation after generation ad infinitum. (Do we need a chorus here of “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught”? You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late/ . . . / To hate all the people your relatives hate . . . .)
The Carneys’ harvest celebration is fraught with its own problems even before Muldoon and his thugs arrive. I don’t necessarily disagree with this conception as a dramatic theme, but it’s not a new idea (isn’t it what Oedipus Rex and Romeo and Juliet are basically about?) and I dispute that Butterworth has really explored it beyond the immediate events of the play. He certainly hasn’t suggested a way out of the tragic rut—is he telling us we’re doomed forever to repeat this pattern, like a cosmic Groundhog Day? Furthermore, I think the three-and-a-quarter-hour play is so larded with distractions and digressions that the point the dramatist wants to make is lost in the camouflage and clichés. In light of the critical response, both in London and here, I have to conclude, though, that Diana and I are close to a minority of two. (Out of 59 published notices as of 15 November, Show-Scoresurveyed, there was one sole negative review, with a score of 35, and only four “mixed”—two 60’s and two 65’s. There were four reviews the site rated 100 and 23 more with scores between 95 and 99. (As enthusiastic as they were, both the Times and NY1 notices I quoted near the top of this reportwereonly scored at 95!) We’ll see what some of them said to deserve those ratings later in my report.)
In terms of production values—irrespective of the dramatic impact—I have to say that Mendes provided an impressive staging. I could have gone with a tighter show—fewer characters and about an hour less running time—but given that caveat, the director, designers, and performers all did magnificent work. The Ferryman, as presented on the Jacobs stage, was an excellent ensemble creation of a living world—chaotic and overflowing its boundaries, but vibrant and alive. (I’m also overlooking the clichéd nature of many of the incidents and characterizations. I guess you could say I’m compartmentalizing my evaluation.) In fact, it’s such an ensemble that I can’t very well single out one or two actors—so I won’t. Actors like Considine, Donnelly, Edwards, and Malone as Quinn, Caitlin, Tom Kettle, and Oisin stand out because of the prominence of their roles, but as individual performances, they blend in with the gem-like work of Flanagan as Aunt Maggie, Glynn-Carney as Shane Corcoran, or Lambert as Uncle Patrick. (Special mention must be made for the for the children, especially the “wee-uns” who took to their roles with the same verve and commitment as their older castmates.) Together, these and the 14 other speakers, plus the baby and the live goose (yes, there’s not only a kitchen sink, but a real, live goose in The Ferryman) to create the vivid impression of a breathing diorama, a universe in a bottle into which we have a peephole. It was almost hyperreal, what with a real baby, a live goose (and a live rabbit), the detail in the set dressing and it shows up in the detail of the acting choices as well—but then, Mendes is a film director.
That diorama exists on the kitchen-dining room-family room of the Carney farmhouse. Fifteen lives have unfolded in this little biosphere, designed with verisimilitude (and a long, vertiginous staircase) by Rob Howell, lit with appropriate naturalism by Peter Mumford, and accompanied by a soundscape by Nick Powell that includes radio reports of the hunger strike at Maze and several songs, including early ’80s pop and some traditional Irish music. Like the acting, each of these elements contributes to the universe conceived by Butterworth and Mendes. The costumes, which seemed perfect for the play’s milieu, were also by Howell and along with the make-up, hair styles, and wigs of Campbell Young Associates contributed to the illusion of a world in which real people live. Mendes animated the little world with as much truth as Butterworth’s script provided, but it’s unfortunate that the life within the diorama walls was less effective than the performances deserved.
The critical response to the New York City production (not dissimilar from the London reception) was largely very positive. Ninety-one percent of the 59 notices on Show-Score were positive (of the four 100’s, two were for New York Stage Reviewand the Daily Beast; the 99 was for City Cabaret, and the two 97’s were Front Row Center’s and NewYorkTheaterScene.net’s, all websites); 7% were mixed, including the 65’s for the Observerand New York magazine/Vulture and the 60’s for Medium and Exeunt magazine; IrishCentral’s lone negative review, a 35 rating, represented 2% of the published reviews in Show-Score’s tally. My round-up will cover 27 reviews. (Show-Scoreincluded several outlets from outside New York City such as the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune,Australia’s Limelight magazine, and The Stage from London; I’m sticking to New York-area or national publications and sites.)
Observing that The Ferryman is “[l]argely devoid of the self-regarding pretentiousness that made [Butterworth’s[ previous plays unwatchable,” Terry Teachout described the play in the Wall Street Journal as “a kind of Irish counterpart to ‘August: Osage County,’ a 3 1/4-hour study of a close-knit rural family that is being pulled apart, in this case by the poisonous effects of political fanaticism.” The WSJ reviewer continued that “it builds to an explosively potent surprise ending whose force is diminished by the fact that it takes Mr. Butterworth most of the garrulous first act to finally get down to dramatic business.” Directed “with unobtrusive clarity” by Mendes, Teachout reported that the “marvelous” cast “features a taut, stoic performance by Laura Donnelly that won her an Olivier Award in 2017 and will very likely win her a Tony this time around.” The Journalist concluded by advising readers, “See ‘The Ferryman’ by all means, for most of it is superb. Bear in mind, though, that it would have been significantly more effective had it been an hour shorter.”
The Times’ Brantley, which I already noted gave the production high praise, added that the play has “a generosity of substance and spirit rarely seen on the stage anymore.” He dubbed the play an “endlessly vibrant work, directed with sweeping passion and meticulous care” by Mendes. The result of this combination, the Timesman asserted, “is theater as charged and cluttered and expansive as life itself. And the three and a quarter hours and 21 speaking parts required to tell its story—which is at once a shivery suspenser, a hearthside family portrait, a political tragedy and a journey across mythic seas—barely seem long enough to contain all it has to give us.” In Brantey’s opinion, Butterworth “mines the folksy clichés of Irish archetypes—as garrulous, drink-loving, pugilistic souls—to find the crueler patterns of a centuries-old cycle of violence and vengeance.” This all fits together, said the reviewer, in “a propulsive plot that never stops churning forward even as it keeps looking backward, conjuring a cyclical nightmare of history from which no one escapes.”
In the New York Daily News, Chris Jones declared that The Ferryman“packs more juicy and prophetic Anglo-Irish storytelling into a fantastic single night than any cable drama upon which you might ever hope to binge.” Jones characterized Butterworth’s writing style here as
reaching for an O’Neill-sized epic after five years with no new plays, but his extraordinary West End transfer here also recalls the naturalism of Emile Zola and the riven political dramas of John Millington Synge, not to mention his numerous shout back to the Sophoclean ancients and their harvest-time storytelling. At the same time, he embraces many of the tropes of old-school Irish melodrama.
In the end, the Daily Newsman affirmed that Butterworth’s play “has carried its passengers on an epic, three-act, three-hour-and-fifteen-minute journey in which you feel like you’ve watched human destiny play out before your eyes—but credible and even, at times, sufficiently joyous to make you believe that we can still find moments of happiness despite our destiny of strife.” His one complaint was: “The only moment of the show that feels theatrical, as distinct from real, is the tricky final violent climax, which this cast does not quite pull off.”
Matt Windman of amNew York proclaimed, “When it comes to theatrical flair, Jez Butterworth’s explosive ‘The Ferryman’ has pretty much got it all.” Windman reported that the play, “masterfully directed,” treats “themes of family tension, sexual heat, divisive politics and betrayal [which] come to climax in an unsparing finale.” The amNY writer asserted, “In lesser hands, ‘The Ferryman’ may have come off as pure hokum, but Mendes makes it absolutely entrancing” and especially praised Donnelly, who “brilliantly conveys Caitlin’s raw vitality, vulnerability and stifled rage.” In conclusion, Windman observed:
“The Ferryman” is certainly reminiscent of “August: Osage County,” another long-winded family melodrama that managed to pack a powerful punch. Many other plays are opening on Broadway this fall, but they are unlikely to match the excitement and finely-tuned ensemble acting of “The Ferryman.”
“Three-plus hours fly by in this riveting drama about an Irish family during The Troubles,” was Barbara Schuler’s “Bottom Line” in Long Island’s Newsday. Calling the play “riveting,” Schuler described The Ferryman as “a sweeping family epic, vast in scope and characters,” affirming that “the vivid family dynamics [are] brought to life with care by a cast that has no weak links and by director Sam Mendes.” The Newsday reviewer asserted that the play comes “as close to a Greek tragedy as you’re likely to find in a modern work.” He confessed at the end “that after watching this story unfold for more than three hours, I was surprisingly reluctant to let the Carney family go.”
In the Observer, one of the “mixed” reviews (65), David Cote opened his notice with a quip:
“Sure yer a feckin’ eejit, now give us a wee drop of Bushmills and . . . um, Éirinn go Brách!” I don’t think this exact line occurs in The Ferryman, but given the three hours of peaty blarney troweled up in Jez Butterworth’s family epic, the law of probability says we can’t rule it out.
Cote observed that The Ferryman is “a play of reckless overabundance. Twenty-one actors onstage (plus a bemused baby), three acts and countless speeches to serve a somber tragedy . . . . In scale and ambition, the work models fecundity and plenitude; so why does the final harvest feel so scant?” The Observer confessed:
On paper, the new piece combines the writer’s fondness for anarchic communes and mytho-grunge storytelling with the gangsterism of the Irish Republican Army during the Thatcher era. It’s all wrapped in a bucolic, multi-generational package, an allegorical microcosm of Ireland: The best bits of Martin McDonagh and Conor McPherson, filtered through Butterworth’s rock & roll vibe. I ought to adore this play.
He admitted he “wasn’t bored,” and that Mendes’s “firm, generous direction” and the “spirited cast” kept the scenes “crackling with physical business and roiling humor,” and the “surprisingly slender” plot “for such an over-populated work . . . unspools engagingly, and Butterworth’s language is rich with bravado, rough-hewn lyricism and profane musicality.” Then Cote asks: “So what’s the problem?” And responds: “There are a couple.”
First is that despite the ensemble’s fine work, one can’t shake the feeling that this is an elaborate pile of Stage Irish clichés. The whiskey flows, rainbows are spotted, tall tales are told and there’s a frickin’ Riverdance sequence during the dinner party. . . . Butterworth . . . seems a bit too fond of the Celtic ready-mades. It’s a fine line between myth and minstrelsy, a border the play doesn’t always tread so nimbly. . . .
The second issue is one of inertia. It’s clear that Butterworth has architected the play on three levels—domestic, national and mythic—but it doesn’t resonate equally strongly on all three, and in fact, falls flat on the second two. . . . [D]espite a warm and charismatic turn by Considine, Quinn is not developed or active enough to anchor the strands of the play in a persuasive reality—psychological or pulp. Aunt Pat, with her toxic worship of the IRA, is a more exciting figure than practically anyone onstage. Caitlin’s resurgent grief is briefly gripping, and the lurking IRA goons provide noirish frisson, but three hours pass, and it feels like wind-up. Which makes the bloodletting in the final minutes seem like a tacked-on, unearned bid for Greek tragedy. All plays are contrived, but the good ones disguise their contrivances, not revealing seams and joints every five minutes.
Alluding to the harvest feast in the middle of the play, Cote concluded, “For those who find The Ferryman a pure theatrical joy with no reservations, it’s a party they will happily attend. But some of us linger in the doorway, unable to join.”
Sara Holdren of New York magazine/Vulture, labeling The Ferryman a “boisterous behemoth of a new play,” proclaims at the outset of her review—another of the mid-rated notices on Show-Score at 65—“We might as well start with the goose.” This is because the actualities of life—the live goose, the live rabbits, and the real baby—“give us the pleasurable shock of the real, the unfakeable, in a necessarily artificial world, and they go a long way towards convincing us of that world’s essential, if not literal, reality—of its gritty, fleshy, tangible truthiness.” Holdren advised, “You can practically smell the dopamine gushing through the theater. Our brains, our bodies, are being irrepressibly triggered and we love it.” We’re “done for,” she declared. Then she backed off, observing that “the farther you get away from The Ferryman, the more the rush starts to subside, and the more the play’s emotional mechanics are exposed.” Holdren found the play “a frankly fascinating mixture of prodigious craftsmanship and brazen cultural and dramatic cliché. It pushes every high-drama button and checks every shamrock-shaped box”; the reviewer from New York acknowledged that “Butterworth’s writerly skill—his sense for build and climax and his raconteur’s gift for abundant, colorful language—is almost enough to dazzle us into submission. Almost.”
With a cast of “of uniformly fantastic actors,” Holdren found:
The Ferryman contains many genuinely exhilarating moments, [but] the show itself is like an enormous version of that goose: It works on you, and eventually you start to realize how it’s working on you, the levers it’s pulling, the pleasure centers it’s poking. And its Irishness—which walks a knife-edge between robust authenticity and lyrical exaggeration—starts to slip towards blarney.
The New Yorkmagazine writer felt:
The play is awash in romantic motifs played at maximum volume—the lush mysticism and winking ribaldry, the ghost stories and glamor and earthy wisdom, the colorful cursing and constant drinking (both given increased hilarity when performed, as they frequently are, by the kids), the wild bursts of step dancing, brought up short by the solemn singing of “Erin go Bragh” in honor of those fallen for the cause of freedom.
And she confessed, “And we feel all of it: This stuff, especially to certain sensibilities, is catnip.” Holdren gives credit to “the masterful ensemble,” working with “Butterworth’s undeniably juicy text,” for keeping the clichés and stereotypes on the down-low, papering over the “cleverly built gimmickry” that would be more visible “[i]n the hands of lesser actors.”
As for the directing, the New York review-writer found that “Mendes treats the play like one of his James Bond movies [he also directed 2012’s Skyfall]: The emotional register gets overblown, as if underscored with dark violins. The director is also more cinematic than theatrical in his handling of The Ferryman’s dramatic flow.” She felt that “Butterworth’s three acts get progressively more overwrought, more dependent on trope, contrivance, and symbolism.” Holdren concluded: “The devil of it all is that is that, both despite and because of its flagrant use of formula, The Ferryman hooks us by the gills and pulls us along.”
In the New Yorker, Vinson Cunningham declared that, “[b]ecause of its length . . . the play feels epic, but the actual plot is fairly simple.” The “art” of the play, said Cunningham, “is in how the everyday turns sinister.” The New Yorker reviewer concluded: “Death and politics are always coming for you, Butterworth’s play seems to say. Neither ever quits or seems to lose once its mind is set. Don’t ignore them, but, otherwise, what can you do? In the meantime, talk and laugh, love and wait.”
In another 95-scored notice, Adam Feldman of Time Out New York described The Ferryman as “a tremendously noisy play about silence and its price.” With all the activity on stage and the huge cast, Feldman found, “The whole thrilling production seems alive, as few Broadway shows do, with the clutter and scope of reality.” The reviewer explained, “At once a romance, a thriller and a multigenrational family drama, The Ferryman is also more than those things” as “the action has overtones of larger stories.” Despite its length, the man from TONYaffirmed, “The Ferryman never drags, in part because Butterworth continually shifts and expands the play’s focus to what had seemed like side characters.” Feldman concluded, “The Ferryman is a seismic experience at the theater: As it spins forward, its plates keep shifting under it. You sense the rumbles and you feel the shaking—the shaking might be you—as you wait for this magnificent and harrowing play to crack open.”
Entertainment Weekly’s Marc Snetiker, calling the play a “family thriller” with an “armrest-grabber of an ending,” asserted that it “grips you” as it “bounces off the walls of” the Carney farmhouse “that’s equally mammoth and claustrophobic.” Once inside the house, Snetiker found that “you find yourself quickly swept up in the action of a clan of endlessly busy farmers and daughters, of characters drawn remarkably quickly and confidently.” He added that “if you find that the legend of this family builds in your heart and mind in equal parts with the dread of some unspoken but surely forthcoming haunting, then consider that a credit to Butterworth’s text in the hands of director Sam Mendes.” The EWreviewer described the play as a “pyramid of a thriller” and reported that Mendes “stages it with violent tension—the great curiosity being that two of the play’s three acts have no right to be so damn enthralling.” Snetiker felt, however, that, “more than halfway in, it’s not quite clear why or how the stakes became so exorbitantly high.” He advised that, “with all the tension, it’s almost better to think of The Ferryman without thinking too much about it. It’s easy to find yourself overly occupied with where it’s going than where you’ve just been.” The review-writer felt, “This is a kitchen drama that only double-faces into a thriller, and it’s a thumping good one—a well-built, well-executed, heaping helping of kinetic suspense that departs from genre convention.” In the end, Snetiker warned that “audiences should be prepared for a genre-bender that demands they do the same.”
In Variety, Marilyn Stasio proclaimed, “Glorious is not too strong a word for director Sam Mendes’s production of Jez Butterworth’s heartbreaker of a play.” Stasio continued, “Flawless ensemble work by a large and splendid cast adds depth to the characters in this sprawling drama that is at once a domestic calamity and a political tragedy.” The Varietyreviewer observed, “The domestic dramas in this household are as primal as those in any Greek tragedy, if not as classically restrained.” There’s always music of one kind or another in the Carney house, but Stasio observed that “we must add the music of Butterworth’s own prose, sweet as springtime, lush as summer, bittersweet as autumn, deathly as winter.”
David Rooney’s “Bottom Line” in the Hollywood Reporter was “Supremely confident storytelling,” and he labeled The Ferryman a “gloriously entertaining” new play and a “crackling thriller woven into the vibrant canvas of a character-driven portrait of big-family rural communion.” The Ferryman, said Rooney in a review that also scored a 95 on Show-Score, “positively thrums with life and love” in Mendes’s “vigorously inhabited production.” He described it as “a mighty play full of magic and poetry—of passionate people forged out of conflicts that rise up from history to shatter the idylls of the present.” But Rooney added that “it's also a work almost bursting with joy and celebration, with dance and song exploding out of fierce cultural identity, and with rambunctious humor and eccentricity.” With special mention for Donnelly and Considine for “powerful feeling,” the HRreviewer proclaimed the large “ensemble is a seamless unit.” Mendes’s “astute direction” is “equally attuned to individual nuances and to the collective dynamism of this rowdy, noisy assembly.” Rooney called the play “a unique experience—hilarious, shattering, alive visually, intellectually and emotionally, even sensory in its heightened rustic naturalism” and added that “the language is sheer music, even when laced with the most obscure Irish vernacular. This is rich, full-throated theater not to be missed.”
Roma Torre’s NY1 review, another 95, part of which I’ve already quoted above, situated the play within “the great Irish tradition of vivid story-telling” and also added, “At 3 hours and 15 minutes, the heavily plotted saga may seem long, but . . . the story is so engrossing, the characters so engaging, and the suspense so foreboding, you’ll be left wanting more.” The production is “helmed brilliantly” Mendes and “unfolds like a beloved novel, introducing lots of curious threads that eventually tie together in a giant climactic knot.” Torre affirmed that “each member of this splendid ensemble delivers finely crafted performances,” making special mention of the little girls, Flanagan’s Aunt Maggie, Molloy’s Aunt Pat, and Edward’s Tom Kettle. The NY! reviewer reserves special praise for Donnelly and Considine for their “tremendous emotional range.” She concluded: “Watching the play, you may be reminded of other great works, from ‘August Osage’s’ animated family to ‘The Crucible’s’ moral conundrum and even a little ‘Of Mice and Men’ but ‘The Ferryman’ stands out as a classic all on its own!”
On WNYC, the National Public Radio outlet in New York City, Jennifer Vanasco characterized Butterworth’s “new family drama is an explosive, immersive experience that manages to be both mythic in scope and yet completely grounded in the everyday.” The WNYC reviewer pointed out that “Mendes creates an almost cinematic realism here.” The script, said Vanasco, is “a finely crafted piece of writing that sets up every small turn in the plot, and an extraordinarily well-realized production that uses sharp observations to make this family, the Carneys, feel like they are people you know as well as you know your own family.” The NPR reviewer described The Ferryman as “a thriller, kind of, and though it can teeter on the edge of melodrama, the play is also a meditation on longing for something—a way of life, a person—that’s disappeared or is about to.” Dismissing concerns about the play’s length, Vanasco proclaimed, “This production is extraordinary—don’t miss it.”
Joel Benjamin of NewYorkTheaterScene.netdeclared at the top of his 97-rated review, “Jez Butterworth’s The Ferryman is not a play. It is an experience, a rare experience whose aftermath will linger for days, if not weeks, in the minds of those who see it.” He added that the playwright “brilliantly relates the tension, violence and dread that rocked Ireland” during the Troubles . . . , incisively using this domestic microcosm to illuminate the complexities of a society at war with itself.” Benjamin found, “Under Sam Mendes’ expert direction, all [the] characters and all the disparate activities flow smoothly until a tragically violent ending that takes everyone by surprise.”
On TheaterMania, David Gordon reported that The Ferrymani “is certainly epic . . . and obviously sprawling, hypnotizing us over the course of three acts. But those words really only skim the surface of this undeniably thrilling theatrical experience, so here are some better ones: ‘compelling,’ ‘heartbreaking,’ and just ‘bloody good.’” In yet another review that received as score of 95, Gordon describes The Ferrymanas “a pressure cooker of a play” and found it “[c]unningly directed by Sam Mendes as a thriller disguised as a melodrama.” As to the cast, Gordon found, “Every single performance is distinct and brimming with personality,” especially “the two slow-boiling performances at the center,” Considine and Donnelly. In his final statement, the TM reviewer asserted, “It’s undeniable how enthralling The Ferryman is, and a second viewing only reinforces its thematic richness. No matter what adjectives or verbs you use to describe it, only one sentence really suffices: The Ferryman is the best play running on Broadway.”
Calling the play “gloriously hyperkinetic” in his 95-rated notice, Talkin’ Broadway’s Howard Miller reported that it “embraces comedy, drama, and melodrama in equal measure as it depicts both an intimate family saga and an expansive examination of the devastating impact of the entrenched "Troubles" of Northern Ireland.” The Ferryman“is richly imagined, smartly directed by Sam Mendes, and smashingly performed.” The TB review-writer affirmed that Butterworth “has outdone himself here”; calling him a “wordsmith,” Miller observed that “you can see how he draws inspiration from the likes of Shakespeare and Virgil, Sean O'Casey, Conor McPherson and Eugene O'Neill. Yet he makes it all his own.” The reviewer concluded, “Thanks to all involved, . . . The Ferryman is an absolutely sensational theatrical experience.”
In one of two reviews, this one receiving a score of 100, Steven Suskin proclaimed on New York Stage Review, “It is audacious to anoint Jez Butterworth’s The Ferryman the best play of the century, as we are not quite 19 percent of the way through. Even so, The Ferryman is the best play of the century thus far, setting a high mark to match.” Suskin added, “Not since Angels in America: Millennium Approaches first appeared in 1992 has a new play been so thrillingly, enthrallingly breathtaking.” The large cast is “superb,” all “giving assured performances”; “Mendes has pulled marvelous performances from them all.” Despite its length, Suskin found the script most impressive: there’s “never a line or word that doesn’t contribute to the whole.” The review-writer asserted, “Nothing is wasted, everything is fundamental, and the evening flies by so swiftly that you don’t realize you’ve been sitting there a tad over three hours. It’s hard to be restless when you’re breathlessly engaged.” Suskin concluded, “Butterworth’s The Ferryman, from start to finish, is a masterwork,” and advised readers, “Here’s your chance to see a new, instant and monumental classic fresh off the author’s computer screen.”
In the other NYSRnotice, this one rating only a 95, Melissa Rose Bernardo remarked, “It’s virtually impossible to describe The Ferryman without using the word epic.” She also declared it “undeniably Butterworth’s best play,” which she labeled “a wrenching family drama.” Barnardo warned her audience that “you’ll find yourself on the edge of your seat during even the most sedate scenes.” In her summation, the second NYSR writer observed, “It’s not a spoiler to say that The Ferryman ends tragically—as so many epics do. But it ends so ferociously, in such a glorious burst of action, predictions, and promises, that a follow-up would not be unwelcome. After more than three hours, it feels like The Ferryman has just begun.”
On Broadway World, Michael Dale assured potential theatergoers that despite The Ferryman’s length, “the play flies by,” and that under Mendes’s “empathetic direction, the wonderful ensemble company provides deeply-textured and entertaining performances.” Not having liked Butterworth’s The River or Jerusalem, Dale reported that The Ferryman“is a completely different kind of drama and its combination of warmth, romance, humor and intrigue is totally engaging.”
JK Clarke dubbed The Ferryman“compeling” drama on Theater Pizzazz, with “terrific performances” from the large cast. Clarke observed, “The Ferryman’s three plus hours fly by because of so much to see, hear and devour leaving no down time for the audience.” With the crowded and busy stage, the TP reviewer asserted, “there’s always something occupying the eye and ear.” In his final analysis, Clarke stated, “Despite many of the portrayals of the Carney family being clichéd and possibly offensive stereotypes, they represent, even in the midst of tragic and troubled times, a celebration of the love, humor and unity of an Irish family. And it is a joy to witness.”
Elyse Sommer of CurtainUp, virtually echoing TheaterMania’s David Gordon, asserted, “If ever the word ‘epic’ is fitting rather than an over-used cliché, Jez Butterworth’s The Ferryman is it.” Dubbing the play a “saga,” Sommer nevertheless found that “the interactions between all [the] characters, in and out of the spacious family room and kitchen and up and down a sky high stairway, dish up plenty of Irish story-telling clichés,” listing the same elements of The Ferryman cited by many of her colleagues. She added that “the plot’s political thriller aspects become increasingly melodramatic.” Still, the CU review-writer noted that the play “is so filled with rich dialogue and well defined, marvelously portrayed characters that, even when they lean towards the stereotypical and clichéd, their words and actions manage to feel integral and, yes, necessary.” She continued: “As for the menacing political situation, its veering towards melodrama makes for a finale that’s as inevitable as it is gut-wrenchingly stunning.” Sommer found, “The writing, direction, performances and top drawer design work bring out the full flavor of this multi-generation filled home.” In her conclusion, Sommer acknowledged, I’ll admit I could have done with a few less songs and somewhat shorter monologues from the uncle and aunts, but given that this is such a well conceived and executed theatrical package, the more than three hours I spent at the Bernard R Jacobs Theatre passed a lot faster and more enjoyably than a lot of 90-minute shows I’ve seen.”
City Cabaret, the site that scored a 99 for the review of Elizabeth Ahlfors, labeled The Ferryman“exemplary,” “a personal generational play, lavish with emotion, laughs, tears, and especially secrets.” Ahlfors called the play “a rambling Irish tale . . . with lots of links to classical theater and literature.” Ahlfors felt that even in the large cast, “each character is expressive, with intriguing connections.” In her judgment, “The Ferryman ran for three years in London, winning major reviews. It can do no less here.”
On the Daily Beast, Tim Teeman unabashedly proclaimed:
To be clear: Jez Butterworth’s The Ferryman is a rollicking, moving, enveloping masterpiece, an emphatic herald of the strength and power of original playwriting on Broadway. It is deserving of every single award it won in London prior to coming to New York, and every award it should deservedly win while it is [here].
It’s easy to see how it earned a score of 100 from Show-Score, but Teeman continued: “Do whatever you can to see it; much-loved relations, prepare to be sold. Rarely is theater so beautifully written, brilliantly acted and directed, and impressively mounted.” Just to be sure we “[g]et the message,” the DB writer pointed out: “The Ferryman is a feast of dramatic forms and shapes, containing song, dance, plot, vivid action, thrilling speech, violence, poetry. It is earthy, real, brutal, and it is airy, sometimes abstract, flirting with metaphor, myth, and symbols.” Teeman found the play “rich, and so full of textured, watchable characters telling stories of modern times and times of yore, that one leaves the play wishing either to watch hours more of it or hope it births a sequel and movie.” The DB reviewer, referring to the Sean O’Hagan article in the Guardian, closed his revuew by remarking:
The characters read as characters, not as stereotypes, their “Irishness” not reduced to a set of hoary cultural markers. One wants to know the characters more at the end; indeed, we have barely begun to know them. What one does know of them invites further intimacy and inquiry.
Jonathan Mandell characterized The Ferryman as “rich, sweeping entertainment—epic, tragic . . . and cinematic” on New York Theater. He explained “cinematic” by pointing out that “‘The Ferryman’ comes closer to a movie than to most plays these days in several ways: Its scale—there are some two dozen actors, all terrific, most making their Broadway debuts; its embrace of naturalism—there’s a live baby, a bunny, and a goose!—and simultaneously of myth; its willingness to mine archetypes, and its bold use of familiar storylines from crowd-pleasing genres.” Mandell also asserted, “A significant joy of ‘The Ferryman’ is sharing in the characters’ excitement, dancing, singing, joking and general hubbub during the Harvest and the Harvest Feast that follows.” The NY Theater blogger further observed that the many “plotlines give ‘The Ferryman’ forward thrust. But the many characters and their stories give it beauty.” In his final analysis, Mandell deemed The Ferryman“the most thrilling play of the Broadway season.”
In the lowest-rated review on Show-Score (35), Cahir O’Doherty wrote on IrishCentral“that Jez Butterworth’s play is about as subtle as a brick hurled through an Orange Hall window.” (“Orange Hall” is a reference to the meeting lodges of the Loyal Orange Institution, more commonly known as the Orange Order, a Protestant fraternal order in Northern Ireland with strong anti-Catholicism policies and devoted to the British crown.) O’Doherty continued, “It doesn’t matter that it’s not really an Irish play in any sense at all, but rather a sort of late Shakespearean comedy festooned with vaguely Irish avatars superimposed over an arrestingly weird mashup of influences that include Cold Comfort Farm, The Brady Bunch and High Noon.” After dismissing several of the characters (not the actors, mind you) as incredible or clichéd, the IC reviewer added, “The plot of The Ferryman is on its face ridiculous. . . . It’s simply a contrivance to drive the engine, power the play.”
“So many scenes rankled me or made me scoff.” The writer recounted that he was a teen himself at the time the play is set; he remembers, “Back then, people weren’t celebrating big bountiful autumn harvests with rustic Arcadian dances and giant family feasts. More often they were reeling from seeing the land they loved turned into a slaughterhouse. It was a depressing time.” Furthermore, O’Doherty recalled, “There really wasn’t a lot of golden world country dancing going on. Strangely enough, we weren’t in the mood.” All told, the review-writer summed up:
What’s disorienting about The Ferryman is that real life keeps breaking through its idyllic forest of Arden set up, but each time it does we even have a melancholy Jaques figure to pull a rabbit from his pockets or quote Virgil, tearing at the fabric of what is real with whimsical theatrical fancy.
O’Doherty’s overall complaint about The Ferryman was as follows:
If there’s one place in the English-speaking world that Americans know less about than even the English, it’s Ireland. To the average American we’re a sort of unstable mash-up of castles and fairies and sad ghosts and Guinness; in England, we’re often just the small, sad field between them and the Atlantic. Both of these outlooks are problematic.
His final word on the play was: “The Ferryman means well and it often plays well. But it simply isn’t us.”
Tulis McCall of New York Theater Guide called The Ferryman a “brilliant production” and pronounced, “This is not so much a play as it is a communal aria. The writing is choral. The characters move in and out like wild folk dancers slipping in and out of the light.” McCall reported, “Each of the performances is crafted to perfection, and Sam Mendes' direction insures that everyone has their spotlight.” As for the script, “Jez Butterworth knits characters into characters, then into stories, then into layers of overlapping colors, then into worlds that are larger than the stage that holds them.” By the end, the NYTG reviewer felt, “The story has woven you into its web without your knowing it. The result is that, when this play is over, you wish it were not.”
[Several mentions of Tracy Letts’s family play, August: Osage County, which ran on Broadway from 2007 to 2009, were made by reviewers of The Ferryman. I not only saw that production, but it was one of the first plays on which I reported on Rick On Theater. Interested readers who want to check out what the cross-references mean are encouraged to check back to my report on 30 June 2009 (https://rickontheater.blogspot.com/2009/06/august-osage-county.html).]