The Brightening Air at the Old Vic review: this slice of 1980s Irish life is hilarious and achingly moving

Audacious. That’s the word for Conor McPherson’s new play, a hilarious and achingly moving slice of dysfunctional rural Irish family life in the 1980s with broad seams of mysticism and superstition running through it. McPherson himself skillfully directs a splendid ensemble from which two names have to be singled out.

Multi-hyphenate, increasingly transatlantic star Chris O’Dowd returns to the stage for the first time in four years with a heroically detestable performance as the tauntingly feckless, faithless Dermot. And Rosie Sheehy adds to her unbroken run of transfixingly vivid roles as his sister Billie, who clearly has some unnamed and probably undiagnosed form of autism or learning disability.