● THERE NEVER WAS A RIVER in an Ibsen play or a gun in a Chekhov without a drowning or a shooting as the outcome. Nor are there many stage renditions of Irish life in the countryside which proffer good cheer about familial coexistence.Marina Carr’s 1996 play introduced a millennial generation to the Irish Gothic tradition of domestic disharmony. Portia Coughlan’s eponymous antiheroine is played in the Almeida’s revival by Alison Oliver (Frances in Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends in the BBC adaptation).
In Carrie Cracknell’s lamp-lit production, Portia’s thirtieth birthday begins with
