LIEUTENANT OF INISHMORE, McDonagh, RSC, Barbican till 23 February
THE LIEUTENANT OF INISHMORE: Martin McDonagh
Barbican, The Pit: Tkts, 020 7638 8891
Runs: 1h 45m, one interval, in rep till 23 February 2002
Review: Vera Lustig, 29 December 2001
Excellent production of grand guignol, uproarious and intermittently perceptive play
Willing suspension of good taste is a prerequisite to enjoyment of McDonagh's provocatively macabre plays. He is a merciless debunker of our misty-eyed, liberal guilt-ridden mythologising of Ireland; and with LIEUTENANT he ventures into the terrorist's unhinged world.
Lieutenant has the characteristic McDonagh setting: boondocks inhabited by assorted imbeciles; a lethal hoyden (played by Kerry Condon as a serious, brainwashed, trigger-happy girl anxious to make it in a man's world). The language is cod-Oirish awash with nursery-tale repetitions, archaic syntax and 'een' word-endings. McDonagh, like Mamet, is a master of wonky dialogue.
This is tomato-ketchup theatre, gory, tangy stuff providing instant gratification. Lieutenant revolves round cats. While torturing an alleged drug-pusher (these killers are stern upholders of family values), INLA Lieutenant 'Mad Padraic' gets a phone-call from his Da, saying his beloved pet is 'ill'. In fact Wee Thomas appears to be dead. Whoever killed him must be punished. Skulduggery and bloodshed ensue . . .
There's some sharp satire here, on activists' addled, cowardly self-justification: chip-shops make better targets than barracks, being less well-guarded. McDonagh bathetically parodies de Valera's utopian address to the newly-formed Irish nation, with Padraic envisioning an Ireland '. . . free for cats to roam around without being clanked in the brains by a handgun'. He fingers his sexual anxieties, the fear of femininity under the macho swagger.
So what causes this cruelty? The momentary, knowing pause after the line: 'I was educated by Jesuits', can be filled by anyone acquainted with Irish childhood reminiscences: has schoolroom terror bred terrorism? Then there's our laughter as the yuckometer soars (unless we walk out as some do). Does our laughter implicate us? Do we lionise resistance-fighters who pose no threat to People Like Us? . . .
Or am I, like a foolish cat-lover, putting these thoughts into pussycat Wee Martin's mind? Perhaps I'm being a tadeen naïve and McDonagh lets us suspend our intelligence too.
Davey: Owen Sharpe
Donny: Trevor Cooper
Padraic: David Wilmot
James: Conor Moloney
Mairead: Kerry Condon
Christy: Colin Mace
Joey: Glenn Chapman
Brendan: Stuart Goodwin
Director: Wilson Milam
Design: Francis O'Connor
Lighting: Tim Mitchell
Sound: Matt McKenzie
2002-01-01 21:26:56