from BJ Jones, Director
Last night was the final dress rehearsal for The Lieutenant of Inishmore. We had over 100 people in the audience – students and board members, as well as interested friends and family filling out the seats while photographer Michael Brosilow shot the rehearsal for production photos.
The reaction was wonderful, the play revealed itself in important ways and the audience reacted better than we imagined. The laughs came easily, the stunned silences were gratifying and we had one of the more remarkable dress rehearsals I can remember, given all the technical challenges we are employing. In all I am thrilled and excited to get the real audience in to see the work.
The Lieutenant of Inishmore is a play about the folly of resentment, mindless violence, political folly, and misguided principals. It takes the form of a black farce, stylistically shaped to mimic an old-fashioned Western, or more recently, a Quentin Tarantino film. Blood sprays, TVs explode, characters insult each other with blunt abandon and it is a festival of extremes and comic irony. It is wildly funny, as audiences everywhere can attest to, and as our audience has come to expect from Martin McDonagh – it is the third of his plays I have directed here (A Skull in Connemara, The Cripple of Inishmaan). But this play not only pushes the envelope, it shreds it.
Violence in the theatre and film are nothing if not the essence of “metatheatre.” Metatheatre may be defined as a convenient name for the quality or force in a play which challenges theatre’s claim to be simply realistic. There is no real violence involved in this play. Steve Tolin, our special effects man, is a genius at making corn syrup look like gore, and fight choreographer Nick Sandys is just as skilled at making staged fights look dangerous.
But why did McDonagh choose to depict this story, so clearly cinematic, as a theatrical event – challenging the capabilities of a theatre’s artistry and an audience’s engagement?
(SPOILER ALERT! – skip this paragraph to avoid revealing details of the plot)
In the last moments of the play, just after she has dispatched her boyfriend, Mairead, the newly self appointed Lieutenant of Inishmore says, “I thought killing fellas would be fun, but it’s not it’s dull.” It is a chilling glimpse at a generation raised on video games like “Grand Theft Auto,” romanced by the notion of political principal and the short-cut solutions of violence and intimidation. Their deadened sensibilities and dehumanized ethics are on display in McDonagh’s farcical morality play.
Yes, I said morality play. Because McDonagh is metatheatrically aware that he is dealing with the big questions – casting them in the harshest possible light in order to break through to a reaction that throttles a guffaw of astonishment and adrenaline out of his audience. It is in your face, in your neighborhood, it’s in your home.
The not-so-veiled insult, the cruel comment and the hurtful rejoinder all have, in a civilized society, the explosive results of the cartoon destruction depicted here. The misguided use of twisted principles is as insidious an excuse as any for justifying vicious behavior.
Last night I watched some of our older male patrons laughing at the violence in the way they howled at the Three Stooges poking each other in the eye, or Wiley Coyote’s thwarted attempts to blow up the Road Runner. Members of our audience most likely enjoy Law and Order : SVU or tune in to voyeuristically observe the autopsies on CSI. The difference in these offerings is that those shows are somewhat prurient, while McDonagh is underlining a point. Terrorism is not acceptable, principals can be twisted for selfish purposes, and mankind is threatened by the inability to negotiate, to mediate and to employ compassion as a means to resolution.
It may surprise some of our subscribers that I, the same director who gave you Grey Gardens and The Lady with All the Answers, am so excited to work on Martin McDonagh’s plays. It’s emblematic of our mission, and my programming in general. My tastes are broad and all encompassing. I expect that from our audience as well. The wide spectrum of choices I select, both thematically and stylistically, represent my voracious artistic appetite. I celebrate classic works, and delight in presenting the freshest and most urgent work we can find. The Lieutenant of Inishmore is one of those works. It speaks to an audience that is open-minded and forward-thinking. It speaks to an audience that embraces the explosive and the audacious. It speaks to an audience that wants challenge not comfort. It is straightforward and not hypocritical, and it demands that from its audience. It demands a sense of humor, and serious silliness. This is a play that demands that you change your perspective. And it asks that you not take yourself too seriously, but take your theatre very seriously.
It’s corn syrup and foam rubber. We do it eight times a week. And it asks that you leave the theatre amused, and reflective. We believe you are up to it.
