Ghost tales at an Irish pub

There's no pub like a Conor McPherson pub. The Irish playwright's award-winner,

The Weir,

is being given a superb production by Curio Theatre under Gay Carducci's direction. If you have a taste for ghost stories and great gabbers, pull up a chair and listen.

Paul Kuhn's scenic design invites us into a cozy little bar somewhere in rural Ireland using an odd little area of the cavernous Cavalry Church. There are photos on the wall: Yeats (we must be near Sligo), the local landscape, the local folks. Every time the door opens, we hear the wind, and we feel the power of the old days, before electricity: "There's no dark like a winter night in the country."

Kuhn also plays the barman, a quiet role requiring a listening face. The first talkers are his two customers and longtime neighbors: Jack (Liam Kelley Castellan, who is too young for the role, but excellent), a man whose story is about a fairy road, but whose drama is to lament his lost chance with his girl ("there's not one morning I don't wake up with her name in the room"). Jim (Eric Scotalati) is a sweet, meek man tied to his aged, ailing mother. Jim's story is the creepiest, about a walking corpse in a graveyard.

And then there's Finbar (Josh Hitchens, who is a bit stiff and prissy), the only one who was shrewd enough to make some money. His ghost story is about a haunted house - and also about how he stopped smoking.

Finbar arrives with red-haired Valerie (Jennifer Summerfield), who has just rented a house from him. Why has this pretty young woman moved from Dublin to this back of beyond? Hers is the saddest ghost story in this loss-soaked play.

Conor McPherson is among the current hot-stuff Irish playwrights; he has a weakness for the supernatural, on display not only in this play, but also in Shining City (Theatre Exile's production comes this spring) and The Seafarer (at the Arden last spring). Like Martin McDonagh (who prefers gory hilarity), McPherson lures you in with irresistible storytelling and storytellers.

These actors all catch the naturalness of people who love to talk (and their accents), although they remain implausibly sober-sounding, despite many pints and many "small ones." But by the end, we might all say with Jack - and with relish - "This has been a strange little evening for me."