The Lieutenant of Inishmore

by Martin McDonagh

Overview

A farcical look at political violence as it's played out during the Troubles in Northern Ireland against the drab backdrop of a bare, rustic Irish cottage and unending boredom in an inhospitable environment in which a mutilated cat sets off a murderous cycle of revenge.

Wee Thomas was a friendly cat. He would always say hello to you were you to see him sitting on a wall. (Pause.) He won't be saying hello no more, God bless him. Not with that lump of a brain gone.

Who knocked Wee Thomas over on the lonely road on the island of Inishmore, and was it an accident? "Mad Padraig" will want to know when he gets back from a stint of torture and chip shop bombing in Northern Ireland: he loves that cat more than life itself.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780413765000
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	04/25/2008
Series:	Modern Classics
Pages:	80
Sales rank:	508,094
Product dimensions:	5.06(w) x 7.81(h) x 0.17(d)

About the Author

Martin McDonagh's first play The Beauty Queen of Leenane was nominated for six Tony awards, of which it won four, and the Laurence Olivier Award. In 2006, Martin McDonagh won an Oscar for his short film Six Shooter, and in 2008 his film In Bruges was a critical and popular hit.

Editorial Reviews

In the person of a man who can break off from torturing a chain-suspended victim to have a fretful mobile phone conversation about the health of his cat, McDonagh makes mock of the psychotic sentimentality of Irish nationalist terrorism.

Independent

...cunningly constructed, deeply and intensely felt, bitterly blood curdling and breathtakingly funny.

Sunday Times (London)

McDonagh weaves the strands of his plot together with superb panache and his dialogue is a joy, full of debunking humor that reveals the terrorists in their absurdly dim true colors.

Daily Telegraph (London)

You can't imagine how many dramatic developments, how much horror, how much comedy, McDonagh spins as a consequence of [a] cat's death...his blackest, funniest, most violent, most absurd...play to date.

Financial Times (London)

The plot is so sublime, the script so witty and the twist at the end so clever that I was won over...

Stage (London)

“Gleeful, gruesome play about political terrorism in rural Ireland, which won the Olivier Award for best comedy...Appallingly entertaining...Enlightening...Lieutenant is brazenly and unapologetically a farce. But it is also a severely moral play, translating into dizzy absurdism the self-perpetuating spirals of political violence that now occur throughout the world.” —The New York Times

“A cautionary fairy tale for our toxic times. In its horror and hilarity, it works as an act of both revenge and repair, turning the tables on grief and goonery, and forcing the audience to think about the unthinkable.” —The New Yorker

“There's more than one way to skin a theatrical cat; and McDonagh's chosen weapons are laughter and gore Pushing theatre to its limits, McDonagh is making a serious point a work as subversive as those Synge and O'Casey plays that sparked Dublin riots in the last century.” —Guardian

“A brave satire Swiftianly savage and parodic with explicit brutal actino and lines which sing with grace and wit.” —Observer

From the Publisher

A brave satire Swiftianly savage and parodic with explicit brutal actino and lines which sing with grace and wit.

Observer

There's more than one way to skin a theatrical cat; and McDonagh's chosen weapons are laughter and gore Pushing theatre to its limits, McDonagh is making a serious point a work as subversive as those Synge and O'Casey plays that sparked Dublin riots in the last century.

Guardian

A cautionary fairy tale for our toxic times. In its horror and hilarity, it works as an act of both revenge and repair, turning the tables on grief and goonery, and forcing the audience to think about the unthinkable.

The New Yorker

Gleeful, gruesome play about political terrorism in rural Ireland, which won the Olivier Award for best comedy...Appallingly entertaining...Enlightening...Lieutenant is brazenly and unapologetically a farce. But it is also a severely moral play, translating into dizzy absurdism the self-perpetuating spirals of political violence that now occur throughout the world.

The New York Times