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A CurtainUp Review
The Lonesome West
Valene: A great parish it is you run, one of them murdered
his missus, an axe through her head, the other her mammy, a poker took her
brains out.
Father Welsh: It seems like God has no jurisdiction in this town. No
jurisdiction at all.
The parish in which God's only interpreter is a melancholy and often drunk priest is the same Godforsaken
rural village of Leenane made famous by the award-winning The
Beauty Queen of Leenane.
Watching The Lonesome West, the last of Martin McDonagh's trilogy (the middle
play, A
Skull in Connemara, will undoubtedly land on these shores in the not too distant future) will
hardly send you racing to your travel agent to book a trip to Leenane. It's a place where it seems
to rain all the time with so few amenities and causes for cheer that anyone with any sense will
avoid a stopover at all costs.
Nor would you want to spend time with the Connor brothers
any more than Maureen Foley and her gross mum Mag. The brothers, like the mother and
daughter in the first play, are tied together by iron bonds that seem to have little to do with any
genuine familial affection. In fact, so explosive is their antipathy that violence is on standby at
all times.
And yet, this is a not to be missed armchair visit to Leenane by way of the Lyceum theater.
It may not be on a par with Beauty Queen of Leenane or Cripple of Inishmaan
which to
my mind is the best of the trio of McDonagh plays seen to date. However, like its forerunners, it showcases
the young playwright's (
McDonagh is not yet 30!) ability to cast a humorous and compassionate eye on a bleak and
joyless
landscape. We may not like these characters, but neither are we likely to forget them.
The plot, if a series of incidents can be so tagged, focuses the prissy Valene (Brian F.
O'Byrne ) and his smouldering volcano of a brother Coleman (Maeliosa Stafford) who represent
a modern day Cain and Abel. Their past and present grievances are expressed in daily
bickering that at times explodes into their wrestling each other to the ground in deadly combat.
We first meet them as they return from the funeral of their father who has been
hastened to his grave by Coleman's shotgun. This has given Valene the upper hand in their
contentious relationship. By agreeing not to report the cause of dad's death he has gotten
Coleman to cede rights to the Connor "estate." (How even this bare bones wealth was accumulated is typical of the playwright's tendency to leave many unexplained background details).
The constantly warring brothers exacerbate Father Welsh's (David Ganly) crisis of faith
over his ineffectualness. As exasperation drove Maureen to punish
her mother by holding her hand to a hot stove, so exasperation over the brothers' unstoppable
hostilities leads to a very dramatic act of self-punishment (again involving scalded hands) at the
end of act one. Father Welsh's ultimate act of despair is accompanied by an eloquent plea to
the brothers to redeem his soul by becoming true brothers leads to a temporary cease fire.. As
the parishioners have little patience for the priest's s "gettin' maudlin" so the author also
disdains happy or redemptive endings as maudlin. (Those looking for deeper socio-religious
meanings in the play may see a metaphor in all this about the diminishing effectiveness of the
church in general though my guess is that McDonagh is just bent on having fun with his
exaggerated characters).
The four actors, all from the original Druid Theater production, are what give the play its true
grit and bite
effectiveness. Brian F. O'Byrne, who was so touching as Maureen's last chance at love in
Leenane, is a marvel of fussy old-maidishness. To watch him mark his little religious statuettes
with the same V that also screams out his ownership of practically everything else in this ugly
and unhomelike domicile is worth the price of admission. Maeliosa Stafford matches
O'Byrne's bravura performance as the messy, layabout Coleman, fully capturing the sense of violence
always ready to go from a simmer to a dangerous boil. David Ganly is touching as the priest; so is Dawn
Bradfield as the not as tough as she seems teenager who is the village carrier of
liquor and mail.
Don't worry about the accents . If you're not Irish, you may miss a word or even a line at the
outset but the physical performances are so terrific that some of the scenes would work even if
you didn't understand a word.
This production, like Leenane, again owes a great debt to the direction of Garry Hynes,
the
artistic director of the Druid Theater, and Francis O'Connor's grunge incarnate set. In a big
city, this could be the attached twin unit of the one occupied by Leenane's Maureen and Mag Foley.
The
Lonesome West set is a little more elaborate in that the jagged
rear wall lifts up temporarily at
the beginning of the second act for the play's most moving scene -- Girleen trying to
comfort the distraught priest as he sits on a bench at the lake where one of his parishioners
drowned himself. Tharon Musser's lighting is just so and the prolific composer Paddy Cunneen
has composed incidental music in keeping with the dourness of the setting.
WhileThe Lonesome West stands sufficiently on its own feet to allow you to enjoy it without having
seen
Leenane, seeing more than one McDonagh work contributes to a better understanding of
all the accolades heaped on his work. I appreciated Leenane more after seeing
Inishmaan even
though it was not part of this trilogy. Having seen all three plays presented here to
date also helped me to overlook the pat overuse of Gaelic shtick reminiscent of pairs of
classic
opposites-locked-in-proximity ranging from Beckett's tramps to Simon's The Odd Couple. (the
brothers are actually referred to as the "kings of odd" at one point in the play -- as his title seems
to slyly pay tribute to Sam True West Shepard who shares his penchant for messy food
fights ). If McDonagh, who has admitted to preferring movies over the theater, doesn't
desert stage for screen, perhaps we'll have a chance to see his gift for humor and language
applied to another and flawless play or group of plays. The theater certainly needs to hear from fresh young voices from all over the world.
LINKS
The Beauty Queen of Leenane
Cripple of Inishmaan
THE LONESOME WEST
By Martin McDonagh
Directed by Garry Hynes
With Dawn Bradfield, David Ganly, Brian F. O'Byrne,
Maeliosa Stafford
Settings and costumes: Francis O'Connor
Lighting: Tharon Musser
Music: Paddy Cunneen
Sound: Paul Arditti
Special effects: Gregory Meeh
Lyceum Theatre, 149 W. 45th St., (212/ 239-6200)
Performances from 4/19/99;
opens 4/27/999
Running time 2 hours and 20 minutes with intermission
Reviewed by Elyse Sommer based on 4/24 performance
|
| (C)Copyright 1999, Elyse
Sommer, CurtainUp.
Information from this site may not be
reproduced in print or online without specific permission from esommer@curtainup.com |
