NIALL MCKEEVER
THE DRY HOUSE
Marylebone Theatre
April 2023
Written and Directed by Eugene O'Hare
Designer: Niall McKeever
Lighting Designer: Robbie Butler
Sound Designer: Esther Kehinde Ajayi
'There is excellent work from designer Niall McKeever, who sets the action in a meticulously bleak living room filled with piles of laundry, empty bottles and other debris. It’s a dreary environment that has long grown stale from a lack of air and light where Chrissy has trapped herself and where no human being can hope to thrive. Claire scolds her that drink won’t get her anywhere when in fact she wants to be desensitised and have no obligation to engage with the outside world'
'Niall McKeever’s appropriately grim, fully realised set and Robbie Butler’s deceptively ingenious lighting design are further elements to savour in a virtually flawless piece of theatre'
'The first thing that stands out of Eugene O’Hare’s powerful play, The Dry House, is the set, what appears to be a standard sitting room suggests a familiar normalcy, however, for all the recognisable sitcom setting the case is much more suburban relapse. The environs are a Samuel Beckett-like capsule that contains a multitude of emotions and entanglements a visible interior/exterior prison, mental and physical barriers to ‘going on … because you must’'
'The set is to die for, everywhere you look is detail that reflects the character’s emotional state, with a brilliant combination of high quality build mixed in with personal neglect'
★★★★1/2 LONDON THEATRE REVIEWS
'Niall McKeever’s letter-box style set, thick with the muck and the detritus of a failed life, is excellent.'
