A Whistle in the Dark, the inaugural production of the newly founded Company Theatre, opened earlier this month and has been playing to sold-out audiences since. Last Saturday’s performance was met with a triple-encore standing ovation. Founding members Phillip Riccio and Allan Hawco, along with several fellow veteran Canadian thespians (from Soulpepper to Stratford) and director Jason Byrne (of Dublin’s Loose Cannon Theatre), have put together a truly masterful debut.

The script, penned by Irish playwright Tom Murphy in the 1960s when he was only 24, captures the essence of Irish lower-class struggle between the patriarchal, prideful structure of family, and the desire to escape from that very same way of life.

The set, simply and superbly laid out by designer John Thompson, focuses on the living room of a man named Michael Carney (Jonathon Goad), whose brothers Iggy (Oliver Becker), Harry (Allan Hawco), and Hugo (Aaron Poole) have descended upon his home and are causing both mayhem in the town and strain on the marriage of Michael and his British wife Betty (Sarah Dodd).

The Carneys have a brutish and violent rivalry with another group of émigré brothers, the Mulryans, and so Michael’s father, Dada (Joseph Ziegler) and his youngest brother Des (Phillip Riccio) have come to aid in the final scruff between the two feuding families. Michael, the first-born, is a child of opportunity-the one who has a home, a wife, and a respectable job, and for that he is mocked and despised by his father and brothers.

The living room-and the close quarters of the tiny and comfortable theatre-makes the audience feel slightly voyeuristic in witnessing the unfolding of the inner turmoil of the Carney family. This was due in large part to the absolute brilliance of the performances-every man on stage does more than enough to convince us he will fight to the death for the Carney name. The performance of the evening, however, unquestionably belonged to Joseph Ziegler. The head of the Carney family, he is the patriarch, the rule-maker, the gang leader. Ziegler does a brilliant job of playing the father who despises his intellectual, pacifist son simply because he wishes that he, too, could have escaped the way of life that has swallowed him up.

In a play that begins with a smashed teacup and ends with a broken bottle, we witness the destruction of a family and home that we come to see never really had any real roots to begin with. Pity grows in you for every member of the Carney family, and the concluding performances of the second act will inevitably bring you to tears. A Whistle in the Dark is a wonderful debut for a promising new company.