he young Irish playwright Martin McDonagh has received a lot of acclaim, with productions of his plays in London and New York. I've wondered what all the fuss is about, and after seeing an excellent TheatreWorks production of "The Cripple of Inishmaan," at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, I'm still wondering.
This play is in the Celtic tradition of local color. In this kind of play, quaintness of character and speech take precedence over plot, and we are given something like a nature documentary of a different time and place, peopled by picturesque, usually ineffectual, peasants.
The best of this genre is probably Dylan Thomas's "Under Milkwood," which is filled with deft poetry and probing touches of character. In McDonagh's play, the language is less poetic than tedious, and character is not so much probed as beaten with a hammer.
In 1934, on the island of Inishmaan off the eastern coast of Ireland, young Cripple Billy (Travis Engle) lives with his adopted aunts Kate (Phoebe Moyer) and Eileen (Elizabeth Benedict). These two maiden ladies run the tiny general store of the community, and have cared for Billy since his parents drowned shortly after his birth. Why they drowned is something Billy has never been able to learn. Perhaps it was an accident while they were trying to escape to America. But some say they killed themselves in shame at having given birth to a cripple.
One who says this is Slippy Helen (Sarah Overman), the young beauty of the village who is more celebrated for her ferocious temper and filthy tongue than her looks. She ridicules Billy unmercifully about being both an orphan and a cripple. And, indeed, one of the truths of this play is that is shows people of such low evolutionary status that they feel no shame in mocking the sufferings of others.
Helen's brother Bartley (Zane Allen) is the village simpleton. The two have persuaded boatman Babbybobby (Mark Phillips) to row them to a neighboring island, where a film crew from Hollywood is going to make a movie about life on these Aran Islands. (This film, "Man of Aran," was, in fact, made.) They both hope to be cast in the movie, and, when he learns of it, so does Billy. But it's bad luck to carry a cripple in a boat, so Billy deceives Babbybobby into taking him by showing him a letter from his doctor saying he will soon die of tuberculosis, the disease that killed Babbybobby's beloved wife.
Billy, unsurprisingly, is the one who is plucked for potential fame, and is taken to Hollywood for a screen test. But after four months, during which his anxious aunts have not a word from him, he returns, saying he was offered the part but found that his heart was with the land and people of his birth. But he then confesses to Babbybobby that he was not, in fact, offered the part, because the studio chose an actor who could act crippled rather than a cripple who couldn't act at all.
This kind of back and forth, slipperiness of truth, runs through the play; and at the end we are given different versions of what actually happened to Billy's parents. We also get several twists on what kind of ending it will be. When Billy asks Helen to keep company with him, she at first laughs uncontrollably, so we have a sad ending. But then she agrees, and even kisses him, so we have a happy ending. Then yet another ending -- the final one -- follows. In fact, there is more real drama in these last five minutes than in all the rest of the play.
Other colorful characters include Johnnypateenmike, the local gossip (Edward Sarafian in the show's best performance) and his ancient Mammy (Barbara Richmond), who has been drowning her sorrows with whisky for breakfast since her husband was eaten by a shark 65 years ago. There is also the village doctor (Mark D. Messersmith), the sanest man around.
One device that either wears or charms, depending upon personal response, is the echoing of speech. Thus, two characters will have an exchange such as "Are ya readin' a book, then?" "Yes, I'm readin' a book." "And why are ya readin' a book?" "And why shouldn't I be readin' a book?" My own response to all this picturesque repetition tended to be of the worn variety.
All of the acting is very good, and director Robert Kelley moves his players will skill. But all of this professionalism can't disperse a sense of ennui -- true to the lives of these people, no doubt, but never welcome in a theatre. Sadly, I heard a few yawns, the most damning of reviews.
"The Cripple of Inishmaan," by Martin McDonagh, is being presented by TheatreWorks at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts through May 7. For information, call 903-6000 or BASS, or visit www.theatreworks.org.
