Customer Reviews

The Lieutenant of Inishmore (Modern Classics)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

With the Tony nomination for Best Play this year, there might be some renewed interest in buying this book (the most recent review on this site was in 2003). This is laugh-out-loud funny stuff, and well worth reading. While "existentialist" may be a bit pretentious, this play deals with absurdity and futility in an atmosphere of constant violence and death. That McDonagh can make this material so funny is a tribute to his gift. This play I believe is a companion piece to McDonagh's Oscar-winning short film Six Shooter (available for download on iTunes), which deals with some of the same subjects, and also reserves its only tenderness for pets. I can see why people make the Tarantino comparison, but I see Tarantino as more of a stylist who sets out intricate time sequences and is less concerned about traditional narrative structures. McDonagh, by comparison, is very much into formal plot devices and structure.

Definitely not for those who don't enjoy black humor. For those who enjoyed The Pillowman (on Broadway last year), this one is an earlier play and doesn't have nearly the creativity and ambition of Pillowman. But it is still very well worthwhile, and a lot of fun.

I saw this play at the Lyceum Theatre on Broadway (7/9/06, Sunday matinee) not even a week ago as of this writing. It was nominated for several Tony awards this season and I can easily understand why. It is absolutely the most outrageous comedy I have seen in years of theatregoing. Very dark. Very well written. Very funny. Worth the trip and definitely worth the read.

McDonagh challenges us to laugh at what would be normally very tense, dramatic, serious scenes. He has created a world populated by characters that think they are smart but we can see they have solutions and ideas that are idiotic. These absurdities make scene after scene strikingly laugh out loud funny, despite their violent conclusions.

The point well made - that terrorism is a fool's paradise and is pointless, creating needless hurt and confusion - is spelled out in comedic terms so well drawn that you laugh despite your better judgment. That is, until you understand the logic of placing humor front and center, as the most integral of survival skills.

OK. I think McDonagh is a straight genius. I read this play, because I am currently in The Cripple of Inishmaan(the tame McDonagh play), but only because out director didn't think he could get the rights to this one. But I read this play, and I almost [messed] myself almost every other line. it is just that funny. I wish that we could have gotten the rights to it. It would be great to watch our director figure out how he would pull all this crazy stuff off. Overall, this is just a really funny, violent reason as to why I love the theatre. READ THIS SCRIPT. IT IS AMAZING. It is also very, very lean. No fat at all. A very short, perfect read.

In June of 2006 I saw the Broadway production of "The Lieutenant of Inishmore." The eight character play has more blood and gore overwhelming the stage than any play I have ever seen. After the intermission the stage was littered with dismembered body parts and blood splashed over everything.
In this black comedy the words black (more violent) and comedy (more farcical) take on new meanings. The dialogue in the play, funny and inane, is right out of the theater of the absurd or theater of the ridiculous.
The characters in this play are dimwits, off-the-wall nutcases. Donny, for example admits to trampling on his Mam. His son Padriac, the self-anointed lieutenant, a certifiable homicidal psychopath who cares more for his cat Wee Thomas than he does any human being, reminds his father "There's no statute of limitations on Mam trampling." The play is full of surprises, shocks to the system, ironic twists, and over the edge humor. The ending is a master stroke.
Padriac has to form a terrorist splinter group because he is too violent for the IRA. He is betrayed by his former terrorist brethren who act like the Three Stooges. One girl, Mairead, entertains herself by shooting out the eyes of cows.
In a black comedy piece in Scene Two Padriac is torturing a man he has trussed up and has hanging upside down by his feet. Listen to him and other characters as they are about to be tortured or killed and you hear stubbornness, and a stupid bent to infuriate and aggravate their executioner/torturer.
The two characters who open the play, Donny and Davey, are two clowns performing a vaudeville act. They are incredibly dumb, and their dialogue is full of non sequiturs.
McDonagh has said that making audiences uncomfortable, getting them wriggling in their seats is his goal, and he achieves it here. Squirming in their seats would be more like it. The audience is saying, "Oh, no he wouldn't push the envelope that far, gross out that much, and that's exactly what he does.
See my Amazon reviews of "The Cripple of Inishmaan," "The Beauty Queen of Leenane," and "In Bruges" for my comments on McDonagh's blood and gore, his violence, black humor, irony, and links to the theater of the absurd.

I directed McDonagh's "The Lonesome West" for the Station Theatre, Urbana, IL, in January 2000. (See 8am.com for reviews and links.) What an exhilarating ride! The new play -- like all of McDonagh's maddeningly vicious, hilarious efforts -- would be equally frustrating to stage, particularly the need for dead cats, live cats (covered with shoe polish), and other acts to drive directors mad. ("The Lonesome West" required dozens of Catholic religious figurines to be smashed nightly, not to mention an exploding oven and on-stage rain.) Certainly his staging challenges make these plays riveting to see, but they are equally rich in the reading. Be prepared to laugh... and then shocked at yourself for laughing.

History is replete with unspeakable crimes against humanity perpetrated by passionate "purists" who take great pride in their narrow view of the world. Martin McDonagh's horrifically funny The Lieutenant of Inishmore should serve to remind us of that. Although the characters in this play can be easily dismissed for their particular provinciality, such a judgment would sorely miss the play's broader implications. "Purism" and "idealism" make it easy for even intelligent people to be recruited into the most provincial mindset, doing what they can be convinced is "god's work". All one has to do is look at our contemporary world with highly educated religious terrorists and political ideologues bloodying and gumming up the functions of government to see how relevant the play's theme is to today.

The characters in this play keep reducing the purity of their Irish Republican Army ideology until their particular "splinter group" becomes a bloody Army of Two and then, finally, an even bloodier Army of One. And the catalyst for all this bloodshed? Excuse the pun: A couple of pet cats.

A play about the absurdity of reductionist ideology that is hilariously, depressingly timeless.

I am a huge Martin McDonagh fan to begin with. I saw this play on Broadway in New York City. It was a riot! I will not spoil anything for anyone who has not read or seen it, but needless to say, the last scene of the play is worth the entire ride. To see this published in a Student Edition does my heart proud. Martin McDonagh deserves the attention he receives. I have produced/directed his "The Cripple of Inishmaan" and just recently saw "A Behanding In Spokane". A new playwright worth looking into.

Martin McDonagh, The Lieutenant of Inishmore (Dramatist's Play Service, 2003)

Martin McDonagh is one of the world's finest playwrights, whether he's writing for stage (The Pillowman) or screen (In Bruges). Here is more evidence of that: The Lieutenant of Inishmore, as savagely funny as In Bruges and as full of violence as The Pillowman, examining the absurdity of the continuing conflict in Ireland with McDonagh's always-jaundiced eye.

The play opens with the death of a cat. In fact, the whole play turns on the death of that cat, as its caretakers try to figure out how to find a replacement before its owner, an officer in an IRA splinter group, comes home to find out what's happened to it. But the question remains: how did the cat die? And more importantly, when its owner returns, will he care, or will he just kill everyone involved? But no explanation of the plot is going to do this justice; you have to read it for yourself. It's convulsively funny, its characters are drawn with all the remarkable precision we've come to expect from McDonagh, and its pace is spot-on. This is, once again, perfect work, and is a strong competitor for the top spot on my Best Reads of the Year list. *****

This play manages to capture on the stage everything that Tarantino brings to life on the screen. I saw the RSC's performance while over in the UK and it was mindblowing. What was totally cool was that rather than a program, one was given a script, which I have read a few times, and proves better each time around.
The play is at the same time very literate and very funny in a morbid sense, the only things coming to mind for comparison being Pulp Fiction and Irvine Welsh novels. This is a new directin in theatre and a great read on it's own.
A truly original piece of work.