VALERIE'S MONOLOGUE FROM THE WEIR

On 28th December I decided to read the monologue hand out that Olga gave me which is from the play called 'The Weir' by Connor McPherson in 1977. It was first produced at the Royal Court theatre upstairs in London on the 4th July 1997.

Plot Summary:

Source from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Weir

The play opens in a rural Irish pub with Brendan, the publican and Jack, a car mechanic and garage owner. These two begin to discuss their respective days and are soon joined by Jim. The three then discuss Valerie, a pretty young woman from Dublin who has just rented an old house in the area.

Finbar, a businessman, arrives with Valerie, and the play revolves around reminiscence and the kind of banter which only comes about amongst men who have a shared upbringing. After a few drinks, the group begin telling stories with a supernatural slant, related to their own experience or those of others in the area, and which arise out of the popular preoccupations of Irish folklore: ghosts, fairies and mysterious happenings.

After each man (with the exception of Brendan) has told a story, Valerie tells her own: the reason why she has left Dublin. Valerie's story is melancholy and undoubtedly true, with a ghostly twist which echoes the earlier tales, and shocks the men who become softer, kinder, and more real. There is the hint that the story may lead to salvation and, eventually, a happy ending for two of the characters.
Finbar and Jim leave, and in the last part of the play, Jack's final monologue is a story of personal loss which, he comments, is at least not a ghostly tale but in some ways is nonetheless about a haunting.

The play is as much about lack of close relationships and missed connections as it is about anything else. The weir of the title is the name of the pub, named for a hydroelectric dam on a nearby waterway that is mentioned only in passing as Finbar describes the local attractions to Valerie. It anticipates and symbolises the flow of the stories into and around each other, and how they have all collected together in one place to be recounted together.

Reading the monologue myself:

Before I knew anything about the play I read the monologue out loud, whilst reading it, I noticed slang and it was slang that was used in an Irish accent. So after reading the monologue I decided to read up about it to find out that Valerie does indeed have an Irish accent. So I went on to YouTube and typed the play in to find loads of results including other people doing Valerie's monologue. This one girl I watched read it a lot different than I did but she also had the Irish accent and she did it very well. I watched another girl and she used her natural American accent but she was more reading it out rather than acting it in my opinion.

I thought I wouldn't like this monologue but turns out after reading it, I have grown an interest too it.

I like this monologue because:

• I like the way Valerie speaks
• The story telling in the monologue is interesting
• It's a sad story

I don't like this monologue because:

• I cannot do a fluent Irish accent
• I am worried doing it in an English accent would not make sense
• It is very long, I would have to find a good cut off point

Valerie's character is from Dublin and she is in her thirties.