Lieutenant of Inishmore

For my birthday this week I was taken to see Martin McDonagh’s The Lieutenant of Inishmore. McDonagh is one of my favourite screenwriters, responsible for the peerless In Bruges and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. It wasn’t until a few years ago though that I discovered his reputation originated in theatre. This realisation came when I went with my brother to see his new play Hangmen at West End’s Wyndham Theatre. Like all of McDonagh’s work, the piece was dark and comedic. Set at a time when capital punishment is coming to an end, the play centres on Harry Wade, Britain’s second most famous hangman, and his professional jealousy of Albert Pierrepoint, the executioner famed for hanging Nazis.

Hearing Wade complain over Pierrepoint getting the Nazi gig (it made him a national hero and took his tally passed his competitor) highlighted how hangmen weren’t anonymous cogs in a justice machine, rather vain anecdotalists, desperate to extend their brand by boasting about their role in the death trade. Amongst all the hilarious point scoring between hangmen, there’s a message about how killing – justified or not – makes monsters of us all. This is McDonagh’s calling card: he smuggles profound anti-violent messages through violent characters. The reason despots are sensitive to satirists is because the worst thing you can do to is laugh at them. If people think they’re ridiculous, then all power is lost. McDonagh recognises this and delights in challenging them.

The Lieutenant of Inishmore was written in 1994 but not staged until 2001. It’s set in 1993, a tumultuous year of IRA bombings and retaliations. As an Englishman, it would be remiss of me to explain the problems in Ireland (I don’t want to occupy territory that’s not mine – this, after all, is where the problem started), but needless to say Cromwell, Bloody Sunday and Shankill Road are cornerstones of Irish history. McDonagh was born in London to Irish parents, spending his summer holidays in Ireland; he’s therefore both insider and outsider, knowledgeable on the land, but not so allied to support it.

The play opens with a body being brought into a living room. A cat. A decapitated cat. A moggy missing a head. A meow short of a mouth. Davey (Chris Walley) whose brought it in is upset. When you take your bike out for a ride you don’t expect to come across such a scene. Donny (Denis Conway), whose living room we’re in, is beyond upset. The cat didn’t belong to him; he was just minding it. Its owner is Padraic (Aidan Turner), Donny’s son. Typically, the son fears the father, but here it’s the other way round. The reason? Padraic is a headcase. Whilst his cat has no head, Padraic has no brains. He is a man of gut and instincts, a mad man that's deemed too insane for the IRA. Unable to be official, he's a member of the unofficial INLA, a splinter group that when asked about peace would likely invoke Tybalt: 'Peace, I do hate the word.'

I won't make a joke about these upstanding gentlemen in case anyone from the organisation is reading.

To illustrate how deranged Padraic is, we’re led into a scene where a man is suspended from the rafters. Padraic isn’t happy that this man, James, is pushing drugs on Ireland’s youth population. How can freedom for Ireland be achieved when teenage boys are too comatose to realise it? People need to be hungry for independence, not Doritos. Padraic pontificates over what nipple to take first, but then the phone rings. Dad, I’m busy at work. Herein lies McDonagh’s genius. The incongruous dialogue of the workplace against the true reality of what the ‘work’ entails is hilarious. When Donny spins a lie that his cat is unwell (the plan is to exacerbate the cat’s illness week by week to let Padraic down gently), we witness another juxtaposition as a psychopath dissolves into a blubbering mess. In a wonderful piece of direction, James takes advantage of his tormentor’s vulnerability, circling him with his hands, concocting commiserations and explaining that it’s probably just ringworm and Wee Thomas will be right as rain in no time. McDonagh knows his way to a joke, having James instruct Padraic on how best to apply the medical treatment whilst suspended in mid-air. Hearing pally chitchat during a torture scene had us all in pieces.

From here, Padraic vows to return home immediately to attend to his ‘ailing’ friend. This obviously is not what Donny and Davey wanted to hear. Why couldn’t the mad bastard just wait to come home? Why couldn’t he prioritise the bombing of Ulster chip shops over his stupid cat? The farce that follows is the stuff of sitcom. Donny and Davey are from the Father Ted school of crisis management, so their plan to resurrect a dead cat is doomed to failure. Also, ensuring that Padraic’s day is about to get worse is the arrival of INLA members. That fellar suspended from the rafters was one of their own. Much of the INLA’s funding came from the supply and distribution of drugs. They aren’t best pleased that Padraic hasn’t followed the party line. When the curtain comes down at the end of Act 1, we know we’re set up for a reckoning: that the splattered brains of Wee Thomas is Coleridge’s albatross, an omen for things to come.

Aye, it's that fellar from Poldark. That programme your ma watches.

Even though what I’m about to say might seem absurd, I believe it to be true. In my mind, the problem of the second act is that it’s too funny. Much of the dialogue is set-up/punchline/repeat, which proves exhausting. It’s not that there’s not variety in the jokes: every type of joke is covered. In fact many comedy shows in Edinburgh won’t come close in terms of laughs per minute. There’s wordplay, sight gags, surreal arguments over quotations and whimsical references to brand names (Frosties). What I felt was lacking was tonal variety. Family Guy might have more jokes than The Office but it isn’t a better comedy. It isn’t a better comedy because there’s not the character development that there is in the latter. What’s special about McDonagh’s later work is he’s married the jokes with rounded characters.

As an early look at McDonagh’s work though, I couldn’t recommend Lieutenant of Inishmore enough. Everyone in the audience, including me, had a great time and laughed more at this than most stand-up. It’s just his later work is superior in terms of characterisation. If this 90’s work is Lieutenant, then McDonagh’s recent output is Admiral, a rank above. With a new play out in November, I can’t wait to see what he does next.

The Lieutenant of Inishmore is booking until 8^th September.