Cripple kick

McDonagh's man of Inishmaan

by Carolyn Clay

THE CRIPPLE OF INISHMAAN, By Martin McDonagh. Directed by Scott Zigler. Set design by Christine Jones. Costumes by Catherine Zuber. Lighting by John Ambrosone. Sound by Christopher Walker. With Karen MacDonald, Randy Danson, Jeremy Geidt, Sean Dugan, Bryan Taylor, Kristin Flanders, Benjamin Evett, Will LeBow, and Evelyn Page. Presented by the American Repertory Theatre at the Loeb Drama Center through June 13.

If there is a straight line from John Millington Synge to Quentin Tarantino, it goes through Martin McDonagh. The Anglo-Irish twentysomething, who has in the past three years taken the English-speaking theater by storm, lists as his influences Harold Pinter, Sam Shepard, and David Mamet. And their fingers have left bruises on his work as well. The Cripple of Inishmaan, which is in its area premiere at the American Repertory Theatre, boasts the perversity of The Homecoming, the Wild West sweep of Shepard (except that it's the Wild West of Ireland), and the uncanny ear of the early Mamet. But primarily, there is the folk lyricism and natural-born storytelling of The Playboy of the Western World married to the thoroughly modern, black-comic viciousness of Pulp Fiction. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, since McDonagh has told the New York Times magazine he was "reduced to going into theater" and sees his meteoric rise there primarily as "a leg up to get into films."

I'm not convinced that this Irish bard from South London, who is also the author of the Tony-winning The Beauty Queen of Leenane and The Lonesome West, is all his enthusiasts crack him up to be -- in the opinion of the ART's Robert Brustein, a Mozartian prodigy "destined to be one of the theatrical luminaries of the 21st century." But even if The Cripple of Inishmaan is no more than a bright rug pulled out from under both Irish drama and the audience's expectations, it's entertaining. Set on the middle Aran isle of Inishmaan in 1934, the comedy centers on the lame and lovesick "Cripple Billy," a teenage orphan who's lived with two foster aunts since his parents drowned themselves in an effort to get away from him. Billy, too, yearns to escape the ignorance and cruelty of his insular, hardscrabble world. So when it's reported that some Yanks are making a film (Robert Flaherty's mighty documentary, Man of Aran) on the main Aran isle and that they're looking for extras, Billy determines to drag his bad leg, withered arm, and flickering hope over there. This takes some doing, the ramifications of which are unexpectedly brutal. But the word that comes back with some other, less successful hopefuls is that Billy has been spirited off to Hollywood for a "screen test." Seems someone is making a flicker that just cries out for an Irish cripple. I can reveal no more, since McDonagh is big on ironic reversals and the play's trajectory is as twisted as its humor.

The Cripple of Inishmaan is the first of a trilogy set on the Aran Islands. Synge went there to get in touch with his Irish roots and later wrote of "the primitiveness of these people -- who are never criminals yet always capable of crime." Indeed, Cripple is populated by a blunt lot who speak a lilting prose that's been culled from the playwright's west-of-Ireland relatives, then both heightened and dragged through the gutter. They're capable of odd bits of kindness and almost exultant acts of cruelty. No one has convinced them that if you can't say something nice, it's best to keep your gob shut. And believe me, these folks have little nice to say -- even about the revered Man of Aran, which is screened on an old sheet in act two. "A pile of fecking shite" is the assessment. But filmmaker Flaherty needn't feel picked on. In this harsh backwater, everyone thinks everyone else is a "fecking eejit."

There's Billy, of course, whose primary occupations are reading and cow watching -- and who, though he wears his deformity on his sleeve, is no more misshapen than the rest. There are the shopkeeping aunts, morose Kate, who talks to stones, and flinty Eileen, who feeds her anxiety with "sweeties." Then there is elderly town gossip Johnnypateenmike, whose news is "so boring it'd bore the head off a dead bee." He's trying to poison his nonagenarian mother with alcohol (she's been drowning her sorrows since 1871, when her husband was "ate be a shark"). The object of Billy's yearning is Slippy Helen, a vicious and carnal lass who likes to peg people -- particularly cowed brother Bartley, who's fixated on telescopes and candy -- with raw eggs. The taciturn boatman who ferries Billy to the main island is called Babbybobby, and he gets his kicks pegging stones off the gabby head of Johnnypateenmike.

Whatever you make of the McDonagh hype, ART does right by The Cripple of Inishmaan. Director Scott Zigler, though he softens the violence, homes in on the play's rhythmic repetitions (which can make it sound like a sly riff on Synge's Riders to the Sea). Christine Jones's set captures both the vastness and the paucity of the landscape (and stocks the shelves of the aunties' shop with an ever-increasing supply of canned peas -- Woyzeck must shop here). And the actors, led by Sean Dugan's angelic-bumpkin Billy, mind their accents and capture the mean-spirited gusto of the characters. Jeremy Geidt is a relentless leprechaun of a Johnnypateenmike. Randy Danson and Karen MacDonald are, respectively, distracted and bullish as the aunts. Kristin Flanders is a bonny, formidable, slightly overdone Helen, and Bryan Taylor brings a dumb dignity to her Gaelic Gump of a brother. Certainly the play is worth seeing, if only to savor comedy as black as Irish tea and to weigh in on the question: Martin McDonagh, great white hope or great white hoax?