THE LONESOME WEST. To 5 November.
Keswick.
THE LONESOME WEST
by Martin McDonagh.
Theatre By The Lake (Studio) In rep to 5 November 2008.
Mon-Sat 8pm Mat 11, 16 Oct 2pm.
Runs 2hr 25min One interval.
TICKETS: 017687 74411.
www.theatrebythel ake.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 21 August.
The wild boys of the western world set going again.
At this play’s dead centre there’s a conversation between a despairing priest (nobody can even get his name right) and young Girleen, who reveals her teasing’s been based on affection for him. This meeting of two forlorn people is followed by the Priest’s farewell letter to two warring brothers. A quiet midpoint, it contrasts the hurly-burly when Coleman and Valene are around.
The rest of the play - a cold-douche retaliation to Irish stage folksiness - takes place in the brothers’ home in Ireland’s rugged, rural west, as part of Martin McDonagh’s Leenane Trilogy (usually pronounced ‘Lean Ann’, but ‘lean’un’ here). It’s an unruly land, like the old American frontier. Representatives of law and religious order abandon the place.
There’s fighting over the family home. Valene’s inherited it by blackmailing Coleman over their father’s death. Behind the priest’s despair is his inability to stop the brothers fighting, something he tries one final time in a letter he leaves them. They pin it to the wall, where it’s like the word “sollocks” in Noel Coward’s Private Lives; a reference point for a truce amid continuing domestic war.
There’s a cabin fever intensity to the brothers’ lives in the confined family home. Coleman repeatedly retreats to his room, a cupboard-like attic in Sophia Lovell Smith’s traverse-stage design, after provoking Valene. But Coleman’s the stronger personality, ruthless and destructive – fittingly, the only character with no variation or confusion over his name.
While James Wooldridge’s Valene seems to hold all the cards, he’s an instinctive character, making wild statements revealing information better kept to himself. Apparently in charge, it’s clear up to an end where he calls his brother back then follows him out of the door, that he’s no leader.
By contrast, Matthew Vaughan’s Coleman, looking scholarly in specs, concentrating as he sits hunched, reading, even if it’s only a glossy magazine, murmurs calculatingly as he provokes and manoeuvres the impulsive Valene towards the situation he wants between bouts of fighting. These are fine, alert performances in Stefan Escreet’s production, which is alive to both the play’s stormily comic surface and bitter undertow.
Girleen: Amy Humphreys.
Father Welsh: Andrew Pollard.
Coleman: Matthew Vaughan.
Valene: James Wooldridge.
Director: Stefan Escreet.
Designer: Sophia Lovell Smith.
Lighting: Jo Dawson.
Sound: Matt Hall.
Dialect coach: Mark Langley.
Fight director: Kate Waters.
2008-09-01 09:02:39