The French-language press: The Lieutenant of Inishmore

Mordant, ironic and amusing, (it) goes considerably beyond simple comedy; the play, without being outrageously moralizing in tone, eloquently shows the sadistic absurdity of social violence - religious and political - which has been aiming its gun at Ireland's and other's heads for many years. (Translated by GLC)


Read the whole review at montheatre


Read Amy Barratt's review for CharPo

Review: The Lieutenant of Inishmore

Thomas Preece (l) and Jon Verall

Murder Most Feline

by Amy Barratt

The audience must be bludgeoned. Beat the feckers to a pulp.

This is what I imagine to have been Martin McDonagh’s mindset on beginning to write The Lieutenant of Inishmore. I don’t mean we’re metaphorically being beaten over the head with his ideas or philosophy. Quite the opposite. We’re left scrambling to find some meaning in the meaningless.

CharPo's Picture of the Week, December 30

Women with Guns
Carmen Cartterfield in The Lieutenant of Inishmore, at the Segal Centre, opening next week (photo: Antonio Starnino)

Sunday Feature: Toward Inishmore

Thomas Preece (Padraic in ...Inishmore)
(photo credit: Antonio Starnino)

By Kate Bligh 

(Special to The Charlebois Post)

I first saw The Lieutenant of Inishmore in New York five years ago.  I had seen McDonagh’s work before, and thought I knew what to expect.  Five minutes into the play, I was laughing and crying at the same time: this piece was darker, funnier, more insightful, and more brutal, than any of his previous offerings.  In this very tightly written and apparently simple piece, McDonagh takes a scalpel to the Irish psyche, slicing off the top layers of flesh and smearing the resultant mess all over any sentimental notions of ‘Irishness’ his audience members might have.

I knew from about half-way through the performance that I wanted to direct the play myself, sensing that its preoccupations with identity in so many of its forms – national, gender, and sexual - would have resonances with the unique cultural reference points of Montreal theatre-goers.  I also felt that the play would provide an ideal vehicle for some of the young and incredibly talented performers that I work with.  Last and not least, it’s a spectacular piece of theatre written in a knowing, virtuoso style, that really lends itself to stage performance, by someone who knows that live theatre can really pack a punch, even at the beginning of the 21st century.  How could I not take it on?