The Beauty Queen of Leenane and Other Plays

Rating:
Summary: He's brilliant
Review: Although my only knowledge of MM's work comes from seeing a recent production of "The Lonesome West," I would urge you to see/read his work. The man is brilliant! I haven't been this blown away in a long time.

P.S. - "The Quiet Man," his work ain't.

Rating:
Summary: He's brilliant
Review: Although my only knowledge of MM's work comes from seeing a recent production of "The Lonesome West," I would urge you to see/read his work. The man is brilliant! I haven't been this blown away in a long time.

P.S. - "The Quiet Man," his work ain't.

Rating:
Summary: He may not be totally Irish, but he's a sort of genius
Review: I haven't seen McDonagh's stuff, but I have read it, and it is indeed brilliant - even if the brilliance begins to grate after six plays written in the exact same manner. It has to be remembered that he grew up in London, because nobody who grew up in Ireland would write quite this way. In fact, plenty of people in Ireland _do_ be talking this way (it's the continuous present tense, used in some rural areas and amongst the urban working class) - they just don't do it quite as intensely, and as often, as he makes out. I believe it's called Creative Exaggeration. As a young Irish playwright, I'm dead jealous, and I would like to make a law against people calling him the best, funniest, whateverest young playwright in Ireland, because nobody's seen the rest of our work yet - but he's onto something, all right. Now let's see what he does next, because surely he can't write the same play _seven_ times.

Rating:
Summary: Martin McDonagh, King of the Irish Theatre
Review: If you enjoy the wit and humor of Tennessee Williams' true life dramas, then this modern Irish playwright needs to be on your shelves. McDonagh uses realism to create a wonderful picture of unpleasant lives. Just as the drama begins to take shape, he tosses in a twist of tragic humor that takes surprise to a new level. His "Beauty Queen" and "Lonesome West" have both been nominated for several awards, and they both are very deserving nominees.

Rating:
Summary: Divine Right of Inherited Swag
Review: Martin McDonagh is a recent incarnation of a long line of "angry" young men from across the Atlantic who write plays: John Osborne to Edward Bond to Howard Brenton and David Hare to David Edgar. These writers, however, have had something to be angry about, and something important to say about it. I'm not sure McDonagh does.

Sure, he's a clever storyteller. He fills each of these plays with a witty, self-propelled dialogue, the kind of patter actors love. There's a naughty schoolboy delight in the language. The dialogue is funny and ironic, but often repetitive and monotonous. And, at the end of the day, these plays don't offer much beneath the surface sheen.

Beauty Queen, for example, is about a woman approacing middle-age who, to protect the illusion of her last chance at love, tortures her poor old mum. Knee-jerk theatricality, if you ask me. Where's the insight? the passion? the outrage? In Cripple of Inishmaan, which is not in this collection, but was produced repeatedly in the US a season or so ago, is a larger play that contains the same kind of banter spread among more characters. It's exceptionally hard to make it work in production, mainly because McDonagh substitutes events for action. The play gives a mixed message to the audience, daring you to like the characters but constantly reminding you that the author is ridiculing them.

Of the three McDonagh plays I've seen, the one I thought was most successful was The Lonesome West, which functions on a level much like the others, but has the virtue of being outrageously funny all the way through. Perhaps McDonagh has more invested personally in the sibling rivalry premise: the story rings a little truer and he seems better able to stretch the blarney into a two hour play.

Talented, yes. Prodigy, no. Time will tell whether this angry young man will grow up to be a playwright.

Rating:
Summary: Grotesques but well done grotesques
Review: What he does he does well. Lonesome West is outrageous and hilarious and even a "wee bitten" sad. Beauty Queen has plenty of wit and poignant moments as well. But, his main characters aren't people. They're grotesques. The mother in Beauty Queen, the brothers and priest of Lonesome West, pretty much every character in Skull in Connamaragh. You never could confuse these characters with real people, they will always remain characters on stage or on the page. McDonagh and the audience look down on these characters and rightly so, they're psychopaths, freaks. You laugh at them not with them. McDonagh is entertaining and after years of Beckett and Ionesco and other avant garde types, its nice to see some action and a coherent story-line on stage, but there are times when you think that McDonagh is the quivalent of a good pulp writer, somebody along the lines of a Hammett or Chandler or even a Steven King or John Grisham. He writes good stories and is very entertaining, but he is not the kind of writer who will change the way that you look at the world or the way that you perceive yourself.