Customer Reviews

The Cripple of Inishmaan - Acting Edition

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Wonderfully dark, mean and hysterical, but under it all is the message that we all need family, community and each other. McDonagh has an incredible way with very natural stage dialogue and his characters are unique and vivid. I laughed on every page and winced with every vicious attack. Although some may argue that the play is hateful and sad, I have read few plays as ultimately life affirming. To use every characters' sentiments, Ireland mustn't be such a bad place if Martin McDonagh writes so well about it!

The Cripple of Inishmaan is familiar territory for Martin McDonagh - the setting is the Aran Islands during the 1930s. Generally the play is a bit less violent that his others, but not much. Cripple Billy is the main character, a young man mocked ceaselessly by the townsfolk for his physical deformities. Out of all the townspeople he is the only one who is not either insane or overtly cruel. Like other McDonagh plays, the dialogue gains humor from blending an exaggerated Irish idiom with ridiculous back and forth banter that either gets nowhere, or covers absurd topics (see Hitler's mustache or the repetition of Yalla-mallas, a type of sweetie). The play inhabits a world where everyone is predictably cruel which the audience, alongside cripple Billy, slogs through for one or two decent things. Plot twists are constantly turned on their head, only to be turned back again, and in some cases turned back once more. Most of this is achieved through lies, which all of the characters, including Billy are engaged in copiously. The violence toward the end with a lead pipe was a weak spot in the play - it really felt out of place. Unlike other McDonagh plays, this one displays a bit more human compassion, which in the end is exposed (however fleetingly). All in all the play is quite deliciously miserable, and you can appreciate the romping good time the author had in writing it.

I wish the story didn't end. Mr. McDonagh has a great gift for telling a story. The way his characters interact is outstanding. If you haven't read his Beauty Queen of Leenane, I highly recommend it!

On Broadway I saw productions of Martin McDonagh's "The Pillowman" and the "The Lieutenant of Inishmore;" the latter play had more blood and guts spread over the stage than any play within memory; the former was a dark, scary play that shocked even blasé New York audiences.
This play is about simple folk in a small village in 1934, and one could be forgiven for considering them simple-minded as well. Elements of theater of the absurd, farce, vaudeville-like routines, and inane dialogue add to the great comic effects achieved in this piece. Two women run a grocery store that seems to be overstocked with cans of peas. There is no doubt that Cripple Billy is a cripple because the other characters are constantly mentioning it and calling him Cripple Billy. Some of the jokes are stupid, but nonetheless funny.
Billy even goes to Hollywood to seek fame and fortune. Billy cons a boatman into taking him to a nearby island where Robert Flaherty is filming his documentary "Man of Aran."
Billy stares at cows, Helen pegs eggs at Father Barratt, and Aunt Kate talks to a stone.
Johnnypateenmike, the village gossip,(characters use long names in addressing each other) ferrets out and carries the news around the village. He keeps his Mammy in her nineties drunk and hopes she'll croak. These are like stage Irish types, stock characters. McDonagh is not aiming for realistic portrayals. This is farcical stuff with the flaky characters uttering vaudeville-like riffs. Some of the dialogue sounds nonsensical, absurdist, but somehow the plot gets moved along, and the audience gets entertained by these nut cases. It's almost like a hillbilly comedy.
The play has its darker elements because McDonagh is not going to let the audience leave with a happy ending. Violence and cruelty are never far out of sight. If it plays as well as it reads, I'm sure it would be a hilarious theater experience.

"The Cripple of Inishmaan" by Martin Macdonagh is an excellent play about the lives and happenings of the people from Inishmaan. Fearful of water after his parents alledgly died in it he will/has never crossed water. Now that a Hollywood film director comes to make a film in a neibhouring island "The man from Aran", Billy decides that it's time to leave Eileen and Kate who have minded him since childhood. The women are totally destressed about his departure and turn to gluttony and senility for consolation. The news comes fronm the local newsteller Johnnypateenmike that Billy has Gone to Hollywood. However having failed in Hollywood Billy returns to Inishmaan to face all the people that he has left behind. He considers suicide but then Helen(a loudspoken local girl) agrees to go on a date with him- even though he is deformed in every possible way. This is a beautifully told story and would draw a tear from a stone. Read it now!

This play is by Martin McDonagh, an award-winning playwright whose previous Irish play, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, won a Tony award for Best Play. The Cripple of Inishmaan focuses on the lives of the residents of Inishmaan in 1934. We follow Billy the cripple, the main character of this play. The supporting characters include: Helen, a feisty young lass who has a tongue that would offend even the most colorful drunk. Billy's two aunts, Kate, who talks to rocks, and Eileen, who runs a sweets store. Johnnypateenmike, the town gossip, as well as BabbyBobby who is constantly getting his old lady drunk, and finally Bartley, Helen's younger brother. This is a riveting story that will bring you on a roller coaster ride of emotion. You will experience love, hate, compassion, joy, sadness, but most of all, you will laugh. This play is hysterical! We would recommend reading it or seeing it to anyone who enjoys theater, or just likes Irish culture, or even if you like Hollywood in the 1930's. The story centers on Billy and his wanting to be in a film that is being made on the neighboring island of Inishmoore, The Man of Aran. To get to the island, he has to tell everyone that he has tuberculosis so that they will feel sorry for him and let him go. Billy later decides to leave his aunts and the island and go to Hollywood with the rest in an attempt to fulfill his dream of becoming a film actor. Does Billy really have tuberculosis? Does he have what it takes to make it in the harsh world that is Hollywood? There's only one way to find out.

I have not yet had the chance to read "The Cripple of Inishmaan," however I have had the rare opportunity to see it performed at the Pioneer Memorial Theater in Salt Lake City. This play is absolutely amazing. I enjoyed it from start to finish, despite some of the harsh language. It only served as tool to further explore the characters. This play gave me the opportunity to explore a huge range of emotions in a short amount of time. I was laughing when it started and crying when it ended. The story is beautiful and gives a true and realistic view of humanity as we know it today.

I just saw a wonderful production of this play at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge. The playbill said that it was part of a trilogy. I was hoping to find the other two here. I believe they were called the Lieutenant of Inishmore and The Banshees of Inisheer. This play might have resonated with me a little more deeply because my great-grandparents emigrated from the Aran Islands to Boston, and I can't help but think they made the right decision.

Debates rage among scholars and teachers of Irish literature about McDonagh's mordant take on the hackneyed rural dramatic stereotypes foisted on so many 20c audiences. This play adds to the earlier "trilogy" only more of the same fuel for the fire.

When I saw it performed, however, it seemed far too pat. I decided to read it to see what I missed out in witnessing it. The elderly ladies' banter that begins and closes the play sets the scene efficiently, but did still not move me much. The play's essential veracity--if that's an applicable word--depends on how Cripple Billy can convince. Helen's acerbic tongue's a welcome dollop of levity to offset the revelations Pateenjimmymike provides. The set-speech delivered by Billy from his Hollywood hotel room works well on two levels and slyly dismantles the Synge-speak so beloved by so many stage Irish and those who put the brogues in their mouths on so many screens and in thousands of theatres.

Not as vicious as the Leenane "trilogy" of Beauty Queen/Skull in Conamara/Lonesome West (the last of which I think his best "Irish" effort). Not as satirical as his other "Aran" play, "Lieutenant of Inishman". I wonder why his final effort in his second trilogy, "The Banshee of Inisheer," has never been published?

With his recent "Pillowman," it looks as if McDonagh's at last extending his sights into more Kafka/Beckett-esque and Continental influences, to his credit. I think in time these early plays will be seen as a warm-up for more intricate efforts. There's only so far you can send-up the Abbey Theatre-school of dramatic emoting, after all.