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While John B. Keane’s Sive tells a compelling story of poverty, desperation and tragedy, the Abbey Theatre’s latest production of Keane’s 1959 play falls flat in terms of exposing some of the play’s central themes. The combination of Sabine Dargent’s towering and imposing set, which makes the Glavin home appear comparatively palatial to Keane’s stage directions, and the overwrought deliverance of some of the tragedy’s most famous lines means that at times, Sive verges more towards the comedic or farcical than the tragic.

Sive (Róisín O’Neill) — a young schoolgirl who lives with her aunt Mena (Deirdre Molloy), uncle Mike (Barry Barnes) and her grandmother, known as Nanna (Bríd Ní Neachtain) — is set to marry an old farmer, Seán Dóta (Derry Power). The union between the young girl and the old man has been cunningly orchestrated between Carthalawn (Muiris Crowley), the local matchmaker, and Sive’s conniving aunt, Mena. Power shines as the eerie and predatory Séan Dóta — playing him with a subtlety that is missing from the other actors’ performances. Keane portrays Mike Glavin as a man completely torn between doing what is best for his niece and pleasing his wife, however, in Conall Morrison’s production, for the most part, Mike appears far less complex and his internal struggle is less strongly felt.

The first act is an hour and a half long and perhaps therein lies the rub: the action is slow to build up and fails to create an anticipation of the tragedy which is about to unfold. Yet, the play’s saving grace is ostensibly the fast-paced nature of the second act, wherein the audience is offered a brief insight into the root of Mena’s seemingly callous disposition and there is a particularly powerful and terrifying scene in which Carthalawn, Mena and Nanna fight over Sive’s future. The women of this particular world are battling daily misogyny and are very much pawns in a man’s game, but both Molloy and Ní Neachtain play Mena and Nanna as incredibly strong women with the agency and persuasive ability to wield the men in their lives into doing what they want.

Sive can ultimately be viewed as a play about gender roles and the tragedy of a young schoolgirl forced into marrying an ageing farmer that is, for the most part, lost on a stage that focuses so heavily on the melodramatic and performative aspects of the play. Keane’s writing offers a deft mingling of comedy and tragedy, but in this particular production, the former overshadows and consequently undermines the latter.