The Weir
1997 play by Conor McPherson
The Weir is a play written by Conor McPherson in 1997. It was first produced at The Royal Court Theatre Upstairs in London, England, on 4 July 1997. It opened on Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theatre on 1 April 1999. As well as several other locations in the UK and the U.S., the play has been performed in Ireland, Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Australia and Canada.
Plot summary
The play opens in a County Leitrim 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 reminiscences and banter. 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 (except Brendan) has told a story, Valerie tells her own: the reason why she has left Dublin.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “The Weir” is 1997 play by Conor McPherson. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Weir, play and Conor, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “1997 play by Conor McPherson” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7774174. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1997 and 1999.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.
- Identifying works and editions
- Tracing reception history
- Finding collection records
The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “The Weir”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow The Weir primary sources, The Weir archive and Weir research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “The Weir”?
- Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
- Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “The Weir” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.