This week, London's Old Vic Theatre welcomed the much-anticipated The Brightening Air', starring Chris O'Dowd (The It Crowd, Bridesmaids). Brian Gleeson (Bad Sisters) and Rosie Sheehy (Machinal). Written by the Olivier-winning Conor McPherson, The Brightening Air is set in 1980s Ireland and follows the lives of siblings Stephen and Billie, whose decaying farmhouse becomes the stage for family conflict after the arrival of an ex-clergyman uncle, a sister-in-law looking for divine intervention, and a troubled brother.

Find out what the critics thought of The Old Vics latest opening below!

The Reviews

Timeout

"McPherson's great gift is how he's able to integrate this stuff into his storytelling, how you'd never say the moments of out-and-out strangeness are actually the point of his plays. Indeed, the heart of The Brightening Air remains Sheehy's tough but intensely vulnerable Billie"

"Big name O'Dowd is also on fine form: he's impressively ghastly as the brittle, condescending Dermot"

The Evening Standard

"Audacious. That's the word for Conor McPherson's new play, a hilarious and achingly moving slice of dysfunctional rural Irish family life in the 1980s with broad seams of mysticism and superstition running through it. McPherson himself skillfully directs a splendid ensemble from which two names have to be singled out.

... Chris O'Dowd returns to the stage for the first time in four years with a heroically detestable performance as the tauntingly feckless, faithless Dermot. And Rosie Sheehy adds to her unbroken run of transfixingly vivid roles as his sister Billie"

The Stage

"Although the piece is profoundly slow-moving, it remains gripping thanks to McPherson's typically sparkling dialogue, dripping with vibrant Irish idiom and loaded with humour and profundity."

"The production benefits from a charismatic ensemble cast and a poignant performance by Hannah Morrish as exhausted, unhappily married Lydia.

"But it is Rosie Sheehy recently nominated for an Olivier award for her shattering performance in Sophie Treadwell's Machinal who gives the production's standout performance as younger sister Billie."

The Times

"It's sharp, it's tender, its every deft exchange is handled exquisitely by a cast led by Rosie Sheehy, Chris O'Dowd and Brian Gleeson. I enjoyed it very much. It didn't creep up on me, though. Is it ever dull? No. Is it greater than the sum of parts openly influenced by Chekhov's Uncle Vanya? Again no."

The mixture of the mundane and the miraculous is deliberate, but the cures and curses of the second half are rushed. Wildly well though Sheehy performs the big closing speech, it feels like good writing, not real life. And yet I recommend The Brightening Air even so. I'm not sure it quite adds up, but it's far more interesting than plenty of plays that do."

The Independent

"McPherson has chosen a pretty classic, robust dramatic set-up here a family returning to a house that's cobwebbed over with uncomfortable memories, thrashing out their differences over tea and whiskey, unearthing old secrets. Still, somehow the plot of The Brightening Air never takes a definitive shape. A stronger director could have done more to address its often-faltering pace and wayward structure, but here McPherson takes the reins of his own play with a loose hand"

"The real magic here comes from the beautifully woven speeches McPherson gives his characters as they rebel against tedium, death, and the heavens."

WhatsOnStage

"Fitfully, The Brightening Air is utterly wondrous. The first two acts of its four-act structure are beautifully atmospheric, dancing a clever line between comedy and melancholy, realism and magic."

McPherson's writing is pin-sharp, a rare combination of the riotous and the elegiac.... But he simply tries to cram too much in."

"Yet The Brightening Air is constantly gripping, elevated by commanding performances from the entire cast, both finely detailed and yet somehow soaring. O'Dowd is superb as Doherty"