After his first stage production, “The Beauty Queen of Leenane,” bagged four Tony awards on Broadway in 1998, McDonagh became the most frequently performed playwright in North America after Shakespeare. Getting “Inishmore” onto the stage was no easy task. Two major London theaters turned down the project because of its controversial theme. But now–six years after the script was written–it’s playing to packed houses and receiving rave reviews across Britain.
Comedies rarely succeed at grappling with issues so close to the bone. McDonagh has, mostly because of a cast with perfect timing and an effortless ability to slip between madness and the mundane. The romantic notion of a free Ireland, that noble cause enshrined in hundreds of jaunty rebel songs like those that pepper the play, is exposed for what it has too often become: the mindless violence of men like Padraig. Turfed out by the IRA for being “mad enough for seven men,” he starts his own splinter group, fighting British rule in Ireland by bombing children in chip shops.
Peter McDonald, who plays Padraig, and Elaine Cassidy, portraying his girlfriend, Mairead, lead the charge, highlighting how violence has become entrenched in everyday life. In one scene Padraig opens the door to three IRA terrorists he once worked with. He welcomes them with a hospitable smile. “Come on in,” he exclaims jovially. “I’m just in the middle of shooting me dad.” When Mairead later decides to join the splinter group, her mother laments that her daughter hasn’t chosen the “more established” IRA proper–as if she’d been given bad career advice at school.
These comic–but very human–elements are what gives “Inishmore” its power. And few people are better suited to dish out this dose of reality than McDonagh, who was brought up a Roman Catholic with republican sympathies. (He’s also been called the “Irish Salman Rushdie.”) Despite its controversial approach, the play has so far received little negative criticism. And although it has yet to be performed in Ireland, the play has been reviewed favorably by the Irish press as well. Of course, exposing the lunacy of the IRA and other terrorists to crushing ridicule won’t earn the playwright any friends in the world of terror, but McDonagh’s not worried about IRA retaliation for his insults. “I don’t think terrorists care enough about plays,” he says. What a shame. They might learn something.
