Plays, it is sometimes argued, are transient things. They emerge from a particular socio-historic moment, coloured by all its prejudices and problems, then are duly swept away, placed in the backwater of some library until a scholar digs them back up as an academic curio. Works like Teresa Deevy’s Wife to James Whelan (1937) however prove the timelessness of great dramatic writing. New York’s Mint Theater company, headed by Jonathan Bank, has identified its still-fresh power. They have appointed themselves as Deevy’s posthumous publicists, championing her work by printing new editions of her plays and staging them far and wide. With an eight-strong Irish cast, they are now treading the boards at the Jermyn Street Theatre, bringing heartache, pathos and hope, as they explore the disparity between economic and emotional success.
At the outset of the play, we meet a group of countryfolk in Kilbeggan gossiping about a lucrative job in Dublin. Cocksure, smart and ambitious, the much-loved local lad James Whelan is the favourite to get the position. But when he does, it means leaving behind his childhood sweetheart Nan, which he does with relatively little compunction for the sake of ‘getting on’. Seven years later he returns, puffed up with newly acquired power and money. He sets about establishing his own bus company to provide local opportunities for employment – really his motivation is the ego-trip of being a boss. What’s missing in his life is a woman. But will James sacrifice his ambitions to wed Nan, now an impoverished widow with dependents? Or will he opt for the heiress, Nora, who comes with a fortune and the enticement of her father’s firm?
Cold-hearted capitalist that he is, there is never really any question of which woman James will go for (he thinks with his bank balance, always). And yet what is emotionally devastating is seeing him grapple against his heart. For, in his own mangled, confused way, he does still love Nan. When he thinks of Nora’s eyes, all he sees is Nan’s. On the point of being engaged, he can’t help thinking of who Nan will marry. Yet the obstacle between himself and his happiness is his towering and seemingly insurmountable pride. He lives too much in the eyes of others, and so, Deevy points out, he never tastes life’s true joys.
Of course, all of this makes Deevy sound like a sentimentalist. In fact, she is a dutiful student of realism (Ibsen and Chekhov were her dramatic inspirations). She was writing in the shadow of Irish independence. Hopes had been built up for a better future, and yet when it arrived, the same problems persisted: capitalism’s destructiveness, the lack of economic opportunities for women, and the poverty of rural communities. Jonathan Bank’s direction has the right instincts. He hones in on the eloquence of the play’s silences, asking his actors to be generous in offering insights into their pained interiors, while wearing faces of stoic endurance.
The part of James Whelan needs an actor who can play arrogance so blind that he dismisses all the riches in front of him. Fiach Kunz masters it. He raises his chin in a show of snootiness and crackles of anger splutter through his words. And yet, for all this, our sympathy for his plight – he is just a small-town man trying to better himself – is never lost. The female leads also mine the text for riches. Clíona Flynn makes her Nan an electric mix of pride and passion; there’s an erratic, coltish quality to her, that captivates from the moment she steps on stage. Molly Hany makes a saucy and flirtatious Nora, who uses her father’s wealth to try to assert sexual agency in selecting a husband. The unexpected star of the play is David Rawle’s Apollo, a comically nattering bookkeeper, twitchy with criticisms about his boss and who has an appealing sense of inner justice, otherwise absent in the play.
The play fits intimately into the space of the Jermyn Street Theatre. One is made to feel every excruciating throb of emotion as it is experienced by the actors. Yet there is something a little rough around the edges about Neil Irish’s set design which alternates from a verdant spot on the outskirts of Kilbeggan to the interior of an oak-panelled office space. It serves the purpose of the play, but it’s a bit clumsy to manoeuvre in-between the different acts, suggesting perhaps a more adaptable design would have been preferrable. That said, taken with the marvellous talent onstage, it is hardly a deal-breaking impairment.
‘Rob a man of content and he has nothing’, says one character. And this, in a nutshell, is Deevy’s message in A Wife to James Whelan. Self-betterment is a noble ambition, but it is foolhardy to mistake it as the bringer of complete happiness. Restless striving for material things, which knows no end point, is a sure way to be miserable. Her play reminds us to place greater value on local community and personal relationships as sources of fulfilment, a message that wouldn’t go amiss in a world bent on perpetuating self-seeking individualism at the perilously high cost of collective fulfilment. It was as if Teresa Deevy was writing for Silicon Valley.
By Teresa Deevy
Director: Jonathan Bank
Photo credits: Alex Brenner
Cast includes: Darragh Feehley; Clíona Flynn; Eavan Gaffney; Molly Hanly; Fiach Kunz; Patrick McBrearty; David Rawle; Benjamin Reilly.
Until: Saturday 25th July 2026
Running Time: 2 hours and 15 minutes, including an interval.
Review by Olivia Hurton