Bloody patriotism, stupid violence, and dead cat
Theatre Exile's production of The Lieutenant of Inishmore hits its gory stride in the second act when it gets Martin McDonagh's grisly glee just right. With the stage awash in blood and everybody's guns blazing, this is an absurd play about the absurdity of deranged patriotism. It's violence-based entertainment of the Tarantino variety: stupid, dangerous people doing stupid, dangerous things. Terrorism for dummies.
Theatre Exile's production of The Lieutenant of Inishmore hits its gory stride in the second act when it gets Martin McDonagh's grisly glee just right. With the stage awash in blood and everybody's guns blazing, this is an absurd play about the absurdity of deranged patriotism. It's violence-based entertainment of the Tarantino variety: stupid, dangerous people doing stupid, dangerous things. Terrorism for dummies.
The plot revolves around a cat named Wee Thomas, beloved by Padraic (Paul Felder), a psychopathic lieutenant in an Irish Republican Army splinter group, the INLA. We meet him as he is torturing a man (Keith Conallen) whom he's hung by his ankles; having removed two of the man's toenails, he is about to start on his nipples when a phone call brings the bad news that Wee Thomas is "poorly." Worried sick, Padraic drops everything and returns to his father's home on the island of Inishmore. When he discovers that the cat is dead, mayhem ensues.
His father, Donny (Pearce Bunting), and Davey (Robert DaPonte), a neighbor, combine drunkenness, fecklessness, and dopiness as they try to cover up the death. Meanwhile, Davey's teenage sister, Mairead (Elena Bossler), a vicious Irish patriot and a dead shot with an airgun (she can blind a cow at 60 yards), falls for Padraic. More mayhem.
Three INLA killers show up (William Zielinski, Brian McCann, and Andrew Kane make a spectacular trio). More mayhem.
There is no way to summarize the ridiculous plot without spoiling your fun, since the play keeps up the shocking violence as it keeps up the shocking plot twists. We watch the inevitabilities snowball toward an astonishingly grotesque conclusion.
Matt Pfeiffer's direction choreographs the action - simultaneous gun-drawing becomes an art form - although everybody seems to be trying too hard in Act 1, making it less funny and weird than it needs to be. Designers Aaron Cromie ("cadaver fabricator"), Melissa Cristaldi (props), and Waldo Warshaw (fights and special effects) make major contributions to the commotion.
Although written in 2001, McDonagh sets the play in 1993, just as the Northern Ireland peace process began. Major London theaters turned the script down, thinking it too incendiary and offensive. But the point seems to be that dying and killing for a political cause are ethically impossible; McDonagh has said he wrote the play in a "pacifist rage."
Covered in gore, singing a song of Irish patriotism, the sadsacks (those who are still standing) wonder, "Oh, will it never end? Will it never fecking end?" McDonagh's point exactly.
The Lieutenant of Inishmore
Presented by Theatre Exile at Plays & Players Theatre, 1714 Delancey Place. Through March 13. Tickets $15-$40. Information: 215-218-4022 or www.theatreexile.org.EndText
