Martin McDonagh is a prop comedian. Sure, the Irish
playwright knows how to put an obscenity to good use, writes excellent
punch lines and is a master of the twist ending. But the real reason
he’s every hipster’s favorite dramatist is, I am certain, his penchant
for onstage mutilation. He’s Gallagher by way of
Saw, with human heads standing in for watermelons.
McDonagh’s bloodlust is most evident in The Lieutenant of Inishmore,
a scathing satire of Irish nationalism with a total of six onstage
murder victims, two of whom are cats. It’s a hilariously funny script,
but most of the laughs come in response to its characters’ blasé
reactions to the carnage. Anyone familiar with McDonagh’s work is as
eager to be shocked as he is amused, and this production, directed by
Jon Kretzu, delivers on the former while neglecting the latter.
Thomas Stroppel stars
as Padraic, an unhinged second lieutenant for a splinter group of the
IRA (from which he is considering splintering yet again) who becomes
even more deranged than usual when he hears that his only friend in the
world, his cat, Wee Thomas, is ill. Stroppel, tall and muscular, looks
like a younger version of Tahmoh Penikett, who played Helo on Battlestar Galactica, and sadly is just as wooden a performer. He dulls Padraic’s astronomical mood swings to a shouty middle ground.
Wee Thomas is in fact
dead, bludgeoned by forces unknown, but Padraic’s father (Todd Van
Voris) and teenage neighbor (Nathan Crosby) are desperate to conceal the
fact. They are the fools to this tragedy, incompetently daubing shoe
polish on a Wee Thomas stand-in, tormented by the neighbor’s psychotic
teenage sister and an assortment of bumbling terrorists, and they are
excellent. Whenever they were offstage, I longed for them to return.
Where Kretzu has
allowed the show’s tension to lag and jokes to fall flat, he has not
neglected the gore. Blood spurts, limbs are shattered and bodies pile up
with a perverse attention to detail. I have never laughed so hard at
the sight of a bloodied cat corpse, and suspect I never shall again.
SEE IT: Artists Repertory Theatre. 1515 SW Morrison
St. 241-1278. 7:30 pm Wednesdays-Saturdays, 2 and 7:30 pm Sundays
through March 13. $26-$42, $20 students.
