The Royal Court's perfectly paced revival of Conor McPherson's spellbinding play may deprive the Opera House's near-capacity audiences of their expected interval drinks, but it rewards them with a much more profound and lingering experience.
Belfast was beginning to feel like the only place on earth not to have been invited to this unsettling evening in the company of Brendan, Jack, Jim, Finbar and Valerie, who gather in a small bar in a remote corner of rural Ireland and swop tales of increasing intensity and anguish.
In the four years since its London premiere, The Weir has been around the world and back, winding in onlookers with its strange stories from "out there", stunning them into a hushed silence from which there seems no escape and reminding those of a romantically-inclined disposition that, beneath this country's gorgeous natural beauty, lurk some terrible, barely-hidden secrets.
Director Ian Rickson has assembled a new cast, comprising Fred Ridgeway as the sweet, ingenuous mammy's boy Jim, Simon Wolfe as the watchful, softly-spoken barman Brendan, Ewan Hooper as the curmudgeonly old bachelor Jack, John Stahl as the flash, prosperous Finbar and Lesley McGuire as Valerie, the young woman from Dublin who, for no apparent reason, has moved from the city to this isolated backwater.
The five seem easy and relaxed in their own and each other's characters, even picking up the odd line when there is a little faltering. When the yarn spinning begins, as a means of amusing the attractive newcomer, the old ghost stories and spooky tales are told in the easy comfort of long years of familiarity.
But there are surprises in store, even amongst friends, though nothing could prepare these men for the story that Valerie saves for the last.
Beautifully written and structured, sensitively acted and directed, with Rae Smith's set and Paule Constable's atmospheric lighting working perfectly in tandem, The Weir has the power to shock, to entertain, to captivate and to deposit a very large lump in the throat. It was worth the wait.
Runs until tonight. Bookings from the Ticket Shop on Belfast 90241919.