While still in his twenties, the Anglo-Irish playwright Martin McDonagh filled houses in New York and London, was showered with the theatre world's most prestigious accolades, and electrified audiences with his cunningly crafted and outrageous tragicomedies.
The Lieutenant of Inishmore, c2001, Martin McDonagh
It is a dark comedy in which the insane leader of an INLA (Irish National Liberation Army) splinter group discovers that his best friend, a cat, has been killed.
I have read and/or seen several of Martin McDonagh's plays and loved almost all of them, but had not read or seen this one (2001), which is part of a trilogy. This is a crazy super violent farce about political violence in Ireland during the seventies, focusing on a psychotic torturer and killer Padraic, who spends most of his time bombing civilian targets in Northern Ireland as a one-man splinter group, and he has a lady admirer who wants to be his second-in-command.
Padraic turns up his lethal tendencies to eleven when he finds out someone may have killed his beloved cat, his best friend. Warning about multiple cat killings in this play, as well as torture and murder.
When was it that violence began to be played for (the darkest of ) comedy? I thought of Pulp Fiction as one reference. But I somewhat guiltily admit I thought it was often gruesomely funny, surely not for everyone, the point being to show the absurdity of political violence. The dialogue is amazing. It has a bit of shaggy dog story about it in that there is some question in the end about whether the very cat in question was actually killed.
This is probably McDonagh's most absurd work, which is saying something. is a farcical look at Irish terrorist organizations, set on the island of Inishmore in the Aran Islands in the early 1990s. The play focuses on a cycle of small-town bloody revenge set into motion by the death of an INLA man's beloved cat.
As usual, much of McDonagh's humor relies on the irony behind corrupt morality - in this case, we meet Padraic, who's literally in the middle of torturing a man when he gets a call that his cat Wee Thomas is poorly. (It's reminiscent of Woody Harrelson's character in Seven Psychopaths, a violent gangster who's unnaturally attached to his shih tzu Bonny, or Ralph Fiennes' character in In Bruges, a hitman with a selectively rigid moral code.) But even though McDonagh likes to revisit similar themes time and again, it never gets old for me. He fuses comedy and tragedy/morality and violence in such a uniquely striking way, each of his plays approaching the theme from a distinct angle. And while most of his plays are rather silly on the surface, there's something so much darker lying beneath, and that's what he really excels at with .
Better than ; not as good as . Major trigger warning for animal death (which for some reason doesn't bother me so much in this particular brand of absurdist comedy).
So listening to the teacher and another student reading the first 2 scenes of this out in drama class in Irish accents was absolutely hilarious! And then attempting to do it myself with a partner was even more so, and fun. This was hilarious and ridiculous at first, though the end turned a little... uh... over the top. And even though this was very funny I didn't particularly like all the cat killing... but I'm not that sensitive I realise it's just a play, and it was admittedly pretty funny come on. So yeah. For its a play that's supposed to be about some pretty dark and violent stuff, it was damn funny, until the end... But hey I guess that's black comedy. Not something I'd typically read though...
6/10 for how funny it was while dealing with taboo topics, done really well to be honest.
My sixth McDonagh play, and there is only one - A Behanding in Spokane 鈥� that didn't super impress me. He's made some good films, but I always think of him first and foremost as a brilliant playwright.