Conor McPherson's The Weir received largely glowing reviews from New York theatre critics yesterday after its opening night on Broadway.
The New York Times described the production as "beautiful and devious" while Associated Press said it would "touch your heart".
Striking a more critical tone, however, the Star-Ledger said some viewers might find it "a little distant and sometimes dull".
The paper said "the relative lack of action in McPherson's static two-hour talk-fest" might disappoint audiences which had been thrilled by Martin McDonagh's recent The Beauty Queen of Leenane. The New York Times focused much attention on the playwright whose arrangement of the stories told by the central characters were "a master lesson in dramatic construction".
At first, it said, the stories "seem to beckon like comfortingly well-worn paths into realms of folklore both exotic and familiar, Gaelic variations on the sorts of campfire ghost stories you recall from childhood. Then a moment arrives, and it's hard to say exactly when because you've shed all sense of time, when you realise that you have strayed into territory that scrapes the soul."
