Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, New York
October 20, 2018

They say you reap what you sow, and that’s certainly the case with The Ferryman, Jez Butterworth’s riveting new play set at the height of The Troubles in Northern Ireland and now transferred to Broadway following two sell-out runs in London. By 1981, the IRA’s bombing campaign on the British mainland was at its height, men like Bobby Sands were on hunger strike in the infamous H-blocks of the Maze prison and the UK’s Conservative government was refusing to grant Republican inmates the status of political prisoners. “Crime is crime is crime. It is not political,” said a typically intransigent Margaret Thatcher, drawing rebukes from many around the world.

Paddy Considine as Quinn Carney and Charles Dale as Father Horrigan. Photo © Joan Marcus

Outside of Belfast, however, life went on, and in Butterworth’s play, set in rural County Armagh, Quinn Carney (a broad-shouldered and sympathetic Paddy Considine) and his sprawling extended family have a harvest to bring in. It is against these twin backdrops that the pickled body of Quinn’s younger brother Seamus is discovered...