Word: mcdonagh
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Martin McDonagh was once a hot playwright too, a few years back, when "The Beauty Queen of Leenane," the first of his Leenane trilogy, introduced this talented London-based playwright to America. Next came "The Lonesome West," but now that "A Skull in Connemara" has arrived (at off-Broadway's Gramercy Theater), the critics seem to have lost interest. True, McDonagh's mordant vision of rural Irish life is pretty familiar by now, and "Connemara" does not have the structural neatness or the tragic force of "Beauty Queen." But it has something that Lonergan's plays don't have...
...McDonagh country again for sure. Two gravediggers, whose job is to clear out old corpses in the local cemetery so new ones can be buried in their place, dig up the remains of one fellow's late wife. She turns out to have a huge gash in her skull, implying that her husband might have murdered her. Much of this, believe it or not, is played for laughs (in one scene the pair smash a skeleton to smithereens), but McDonagh's comedy, unlike Lonergan's, never seems pasted on, or patronizing. We never lose sight of the dark drama beneath...
This week, the Boston Center for the Arts held a panel to discuss both McDonagh's portrayal of Irish culture in a multi-ethnic world and the reason for the play's tremendous popularity. These issues, while compelling, are certainly not new. From John Millington Synge and his Playboy of the Western World to Frank McCourt and the recent phenomenon of Angela's Ashes, the theme of impoverished rural Ireland (dubbed "The Genre of Irish Squalor" by one critic) is one that never fails to attract an enthusiastic audience, especially an American...
...whatever cliches of class and setting McDonagh may help perpetuate in The Beauty Queen of Leenane, there is no denying the efficacy of his script and the tremendous complexity of his characters. And with compelling productions like Engel's to affirm the play's quality, the line at the box office will certainly not be slowing anytime soon...
...Martin McDonagh...