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''The Weir'' is a play written by Conor McPherson in 1997. It was first produced at The Royal Court Theatre Upstairs in London, England, on 4 July 1997. It first appeared on Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theatre on 1 April 1999. It has since been performed in Toronto, Dublin, Belfast, Bolton, Bury St Edmunds, Hamburg, Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, Chicago, Buffalo, Washington, D.C., Detroit, San Jose, Coalisland, and San Francisco.〔Kerrane, Kevin. ''The Structural Elegance of Conor McPherson's The Weir'' New Hibernia Review 10.4 (2006) 105-121〕 == Plot summary == The play opens in a rural Irish pub with Brendan, the publican and Jack, a car mechanic and garage owner. These two begin to discuss their respective days and are soon joined by Jim. The three then discuss Valerie, a pretty young woman from Dublin who has just rented an old house in the area. Finbar, a businessman, arrives with Valerie, and the play revolves around reminiscence and the kind of banter which only comes about amongst men who have a shared upbringing. After a few drinks, the group begin telling stories with a supernatural slant, related to their own experience or those of others in the area, and which arise out of the popular preoccupations of Irish folklore: ghosts, fairies and mysterious happenings. After each man (with the exception of Brendan) has told a story, Valerie tells her own: the reason why she has left Dublin. Valerie's story is melancholy and undoubtedly true, with a ghostly twist which echoes the earlier tales, and shocks the men who become softer, kinder, and more real. There is the hint that the story may lead to salvation and, eventually, a happy ending for two of the characters. Finbar and Jim leave, and in the last part of the play, Jack's final monologue is a story of personal loss which, he comments, is at least not a ghostly tale but in some ways is nonetheless about a haunting. The play is as much about lack of close relationships and missed connections as it is about anything else. The weir of the title is the name of the pub, named for a hydroelectric dam on a nearby waterway that is mentioned only in passing as Finbar describes the local attractions to Valerie. It anticipates and symbolises the flow of the stories into and around each other, and how they have all collected together in one place to be recounted together. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Weir」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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