BAWDY,BRUTALBUT A BIT UNBALANCED
The cruel island world of Martin McDonagh is a place of relentless barbarism and black humour
‘Billy is the constant butt of cruel remarks, even from his caring adoptive aunts’
The Cripple of Inishmaan Gaiety Theatre, until March 9 HHHHH
Martin McDonagh has often been accused of writing stage-Irish characters using dialogue that’s a bad imitation of Synge’s Playboy. But, like Synge, he avoids sentimental descriptions of decent, God-fearing folk surviving through courage and prayer.
Reality is always painfully apparent, even if it sometimes seems grotesque. In one interview he said that he has to find a story first, and lets the issues ‘just bubble up underneath’. Strong stories and rasping dialogue are why his plays make such entertaining theatre.
Although the dialogue here is regularly bawdy, brutal and savagely funny, actual brutality is less in Cripple than in his other plays. The real difficulty is balancing the outrageous humour with the serious aspects. This production doesn’t always manage it.
The play is set on Inishmaan in 1934, when the American film producer Robert Flaherty was making a documentary on nearby Inishmore about the rugged life of the island- Ironically, Flaherty had to re-educate the islanders about shark fishing and the primitive life. The islander who played the main character in the ‘documentary’ later said ‘gur bull **** a bhí ann.’
But to the characters in the play, the arrival of the film crew is a blessed release from terminal tedium. To cripple Billy Craven, an orphan with a twisted leg and arm, whose only recreation is looking at cows, the filmmakers present a forlorn chance to escape from the stifling island life to Hollywood stardom.
Billy is the constant butt of cruel remarks about his disabilities, even from his caring adoptive aunts, Kate and Eileen, who run the local shop. (‘He’d never be kissed except by a blind girl.’) Their links to the world outside the shop consist of bulletins from the local gossip Johnnypateenmike (Phelim Drew at his best), that can range from news about dead animals to a couple of men having a row.
Amid all the boredom, McDonagh’s island backwater has its share of priestly groping, girls not always virginal, and the grim shadow of TB. Johnnypateen fuels his 90-yearold mother Mammy (Rosaleen Linehan) with drink to hasten her departure. Her comment that, ‘in Ireland the people are more friendly’, is a typical example of McDonagh’s deliers. cious twisted humour. The play depends a great deal on not letting the squirm-making black comedy drown the reality of the situation as experienced by poor Billy. ‘There’s many as crippled as me,’ he says, ‘but it isn’t on the outside it shows.’
Ruairí Heading is a competent Billy, but the anger seething underneath is never quite enough to balance the humour.
The play takes a long time to evolve its strained plot. As a result, the comedy begins to sound too repetitive, especially in the extended relationship between egg-throwing Helen and her infantile brother Bartley. It’s funny, but it ends up seeming almost irrelevant.
Catherine Walsh and Norma Sheahan are a delightful double act as Billy’s adoptive aunts, running their shop that’s overstocked with tinned peas, alternately worried about him while piling on the insults.
The set, by Owen MacCarthaigh, is a particularly fine flexible structure that captures interiors and exteriors with minimum movement and maximum effect.