The Lieutenant of Inishmore

I've read Martin McDonagh before, but nothing prepared me for the unmitigated excess of The Lieutenant of Inishmore. I had heard it was a violent, dark comedy ... but this was on a level I hadn't expected, not least of which because it feels almost completely unstageable. I don't know how a writer who keeps a pen in both the worlds of stage and film decides which idea finds a home in which medium, but I can't escape the feeling that the bloody ultraviolence here might've been more at home on film. But perhaps it's the very staginess of it all - the way it will almost have to be cartoony in the theater - that is the point. Realistic violence might turn this into Hostel-meets-Scream, but the perspective of the stage keeps it from bogging down in blood and keeps the focus on character.

Of course it's very easy to compare the play to Grand Guignol (need any more examples ... like 300 of them?). But that's more indicative of the cache of throwing around French terms to show how educated you are. The Lieutenant Of Inishmore is straight-up Jacobean Revenge Tragedy, only slightly exaggerated for effect. It's a literal revenge tragedy, even if the party being avenged is distinctly feline in shape. And just as the Jacobeans were satirizing current politics, this bloody farce is making a point about the cycles of violence that have defined so much of Irish life for centuries. It's pure reductio ad absurdum as the bloody murders of The Troubles get enacted in a living room, over the body of a dead cat. It's a brilliant ride, exploiting the thrills that Jacobean playwrights like Ford and Webster understood completely, while still making a completely contemporary point about the escalating nature of violence itself.