 |
By Woodrow J. Hinton
|
Martin McDonagh
|
Martin McDonagh recently turned 30. The playwright is just about the hottest theatrical talent on both sides of the Atlantic these days. His shows have been staged in Dublin and London to great acclaim, and their New York productions have been nominated for Tony Awards the past two seasons.
Cincinnatians are about to enjoy a wee little McDonagh festival with not one but two chances to see the brash Irish playwright's work at the Cincinnati Playhouse and Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati (ETC). These parallel productions represent an unprecedented collaborative effort on the part of the city's two principal theaters to present plays by an outstanding new talent.
The Beauty Queen of Leenane at the Playhouse is the better-known show, a dark contemporary tale about a mother and daughter whose lives revolve around making one another miserable. Jack Going is the guest director for this joint production with the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, where it opened in January.
Going says McDonagh's work has been well received because the playwright is a natural storyteller. "That's something that has been a little lacking, frankly, in some of our recent playwriting. He really spins a wonderful yarn. There's a lot of suspense and melodrama in it. He really keeps you on the edge of your seat."
Going marvels at McDonagh's ability to assemble a story that draws you in. "When you put the pieces together," he says, "you believe it could happen. But the events he deals with are really quite shocking and fascinating."
Artistic Director D. Lynn Meyers is staging ETC's regional premiere of McDonagh's The Cripple of Inishmaan, opening in mid-March. This play, set in 1934, is about a physically disabled young man seeking to escape his desperate and oppressive life by connecting with an American film crew on a nearby island.
"McDonagh has a interesting point of view," says Meyers. "His characters are really fascinating. We like them in spite of themselves. They're not operating in a totally real world. This isn't kitchen-sink drama, and it's not Neil Simon humor. It's something in-between."
Meyers believes McDonagh's point of view derives from the fact that, while he's of Irish descent, he never lived there. His construction worker father and his mother, a part-time domestic, moved to London from Ireland, and McDonagh still lives there, in Camberwell, a blue collar neighborhood.
"Because he wasn't born and raised in Ireland," Meyers notes, "he has a perspective that's both loving and a little bit realistic about these people. That's different from someone who comes in as an Irish advocate."
McDonagh also isn't much of a theater advocate: He prefers to watch television and films. He took up writing largely from the example of his brother, an aspiring screenwriter. He's no slacker: By the time he was 26, he'd written eight major plays. But he also has called writing "unemployment with honor."
McDonagh's appeal, in Going's eyes, is premised on a bleaker contemporary world view. Beauty Queen, he explains, is not a warm and cozy show. "But the world isn't that way either. We've turned rather cynical. This play and his other plays reflect that. So it strikes a chord that we can understand and respond to."
Beauty Queen, set in the very recent past, has resonance beyond its particular story, Going says. "The society is a very deprived one; the people are in an isolated situation. Life was bleak. There was no work, no chance for young people to get out. This does not breed healthy people." So it's a cautionary tale about how people respond to such pressures.
Cripple, occurring 60 years in the past, has a different feeling, says Meyers. McDonagh, she says, creates his own world. "That kind of makes it a little more surreal than real. But it also makes it terribly personal. It is incredibly funny and violent, at the same time. The humor distinguishes it.
 |
Photo By Wendy Uhlman
|
To prepare for ETC's production of The Cripple of
Inishmaan, director D. Lynn Meyers told designer c.
Brian Mehring she envisioned the play's central image
as "if stones could speak." Mehring took her literally,
and rented nine tons of rocks and sand for the set.
"Before I knew it," Meyers laughs, "we had an alley full
of rock." Staff and volunteers (above) had a "Rock
Party" on a recent Saturday, moving it all into ETC's
Vine Street theater space.
|
"He's creating people he enjoys and putting them where he knows," she adds. "I think that's a terrific match, and that's why so many people want to do his work."
Meyers is excited to be staging Cripple at ETC while the Playhouse offers Beauty Queen. "These are two completely different views for this wonderful writer who is making a name for himself at his age, in a world full of wonderful writers."
THE BEAUTY QUEEN OF LEENANE opens Thursday at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, and will continue through March 31. THE CRIPPLE OF INISHMAAN, staged by Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati, will be presented from March 15 to April 2.
