Dolly West’s Kitchen

IRISH STEW Chamberlain and McDonnell mull over their troubles.

PHOTO: LARA GOETSCH

Playwright McGuinness’s Chekhovian dramedy is set in “neutral” Ireland’s County Donegal in the closing stages of World War II. The West family—adult children Justin, Dolly and Esther and their feisty widowed mother, Rima—undergo personal and familial upheaval brought on both by the war itself and by the specific outside influences it brings to them: the relationships they develop with three soldiers stationed in Derry, just across the border into Northern Ireland. Alec, a British officer and college friend of Dolly’s, has been charged with the oversight of American GIs Marco and Jamie; all three become regular guests in Dolly’s kitchen.

The fact that Dolly is college-educated and unmarried is a tip-off that the Wests are not the stereotypical Irish family of the 1940s; they’re both proudly Irish and outsiders in their own land. Indeed, McGuinness brings a startlingly contemporary approach to the period drama and the problems of nationalism. Senior’s cinematic staging is always smart and sometimes breathtaking, and her more-than-capable actors bring wit and pathos to the stage in equal measure. (That Kat McDonnell, Cliff Chamberlain and Danica Ivancevic seem too young for their roles as Dolly, Alec and Esther, respectively, is made up for by their formidable performances.)

Dolly explains Ireland’s abstention from the war by pointing out her family’s own internecine infighting: “We’ve got a genius for it, but only when it’s confined to our own.” It’s both a wistful snapshot of what it was to be Irish at the time, and a heartbreaking harbinger of the troubles to come.