Theater Online - New York Theater Reviews

Martin McDonagh’s The Cripple of Inishmaan, presented by the Atlantic Theater Company, revolves around the plight of a physically challenged orphan called “Cripple Billy” (a flawless Aaron Monaghan) who attempts to escape his suffocating existence in Inishmaan by following his dreams to the neighboring Inishmore, where Hollywood filmmaker Robert Flaherty has come to shoot his movie The Man of Aran on the little Irish island in 1934. But the tabloid plot is merely a foil for playwright McDonagh (who just in the past few years – like Quentin Tarantino did for film in the early nineties – has utilized a sense of anything-can-happen, dangerous adventure to single-handedly punch new life into the great white way with The Pillowman and The Lieutenant of Inishmore) to explore the collective mirror of his homeland itself.

Yet there’s a stability and consistency underlying the insanity, a sturdy method to the madness, that shines through courtesy of the Druid Theatre Company’s cast and crew, most of whom – from director and Druid founder Garry Hynes, to the set and costume designer Francis O’Connor, to actress Marie Mullen who plays elderly auntie Kate and who took home a Tony for The Beauty Queen of Leenane – have worked on McDonagh’s plays before. The pitch-perfect, predominantly Irish ensemble share McDonagh’s love of the Irish (s)language, make the most of speeches employed repetitively like musical refrains. A tense discussion about “sweeties” and “minty-o’s” and “yellow mellows” renders the thespians kids in a candy store as they play with the writer’s words. And they invest those words with a sense of no-nonsense gravitas that keeps McDonagh’s high-flying absurdity from spiraling into utter chaos.

Along with the play’s stream-of-consciousness dialogue (which can go from bits about telescopes to worms to cows and back) there’s a running gag as hilarious as any Monty Python skit. A character, grasping at the smallest straw as proof that their nation is just as great as any other (including America – Hollywood be damned!) declares, “Ireland must not be such a bad place if” – fill in the blank with “blacks,” “Germans,” “dentists,” “sharks” – “want to come here.” The piece is rolling-in-the-aisles funny, but it also addresses the stubborn, perverse patriotic pride masking heartbreaking pain and shame that historically has defined the damaged psyche of the country. It’s not a coincidence the lead character is handicapped, for Billy – who even as he wheezes speaks of the Irish spirit never being broken, of overcoming oppression – represents nothing less than the second-class soul of Ireland itself. And even while McDonagh pokes fun at every cliché (characters have names like JohnnyPateenMike and BabbyBobby) he holds Ireland tight in his passionate embrace, paralleling the Inishmaan community that adores Billy, with his “Hunchback of Notre Dame” pathos, every bit as much as it loves to cruelly make fun of him.

For it’s not just McDonagh’s gift for telling stories of predictability in unpredictable ways (a can of peas becomes a turning point), nor his ability to weave fairytales and deceitful lies deftly within his own fiction that makes him one of the greatest playwrights of his generation. Simply put, it’s McDonagh’s humanity that is at the root of his genius. He can create close-to-his-heart, violent female characters – like the gun-toting, IRA terrorist wanna-be of The Lieutenant of Inishmore and this play’s Slippy Helen (played by Kerry Condon who is also a veteran of Inishmore) who sighs, “I always liked Pontius Pilate,” and has a hit woman sideline murdering animals in addition to delivering (well, breaking) eggs – and simultaneously invest them with maternal warmth. McDonagh is a master at utilizing the whiplash of emotions (his stock in trade) as in the scene in which Billy’s sick-with-worry aunties brace for the “bad news” delivered by a painedBabbyBobby (Andrew Connolly, another Inishmore vet). When doting Kate, certain of Billy’s death, learns the unfortunate truth that “He’s been taken to America for a screen test for a movie about a cripple boy,” she immediately snarls, “I hope he drowns on that boat to America!” Like McDonagh’s entire body of work, the scene is hysterical and ludicrous, and poignant and real. And every emotion comes as hard and fast as softhearted BabbyBobby can deliver a vicious blow to the head. For McDonagh traffics in ambiguity, writes squarely in the grey. “We’re all cripples in some way,” he seems to say. There are no sinners, no saints – not even Cripple Billy. Which respectfully humanizes – not patronizes – him, and Ireland, and us, in the end.