★★★★
Well, feck. Writer Martin McDonagh isn’t pulling any punches—or gun shots—in this whirlwind of a show performed at the Liverpool Everyman. The Lieutenant of Inishmore starts off almost innocuously and begins what can only be described as a rapid descent into unadulterated butchery. It is hilariously blood-bathed madness set in the times of the Troubles in the Republic of Ireland.
The problem is that Wee Thomas (a local cat) has been brained. The problem for Davey (Taylor McClaine) is that he is the one who found Wee Thomas. The bigger problem is the reaction of Wee Thomas’ owner. And the complication for Donny (Alan Turkington), is that the owner is his son, Padraic (Julian Moore-Cook). Padraic is a man who just wants a free Ireland, and is willing to spend as many bullets, and claim as many toenails, as he deems necessary to get it. He switches from sadism to sobbing for his cat in a heartbeat and leans into the quick-witted script in his effortlessly polarised performance. As the scapegoat for Wee Thomas’ death, McClaine plays Davey’s disdain for the violent tendencies of everyone around him with youthful energy and grim realism. Some people are just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and Davey has a quip for every one of those.
As Padraic disbands his current torturing and rushes back for Wee Thomas, Donny and pony-tailed Davey are drinking through their horror of what’s to come. Several other characters are thrown into the mix, including a wild sixteen-year-old Republican (Davey’s proud and haughty sister Mairead (Katherine Devlin)) and a trio from an IRA splinter group bickering between one another on politics, the English, and mostly, the morals of braining cats.
The set is well-juxtaposed, made up of two parts: the rocks and rubble of the outside and the interior of a homely kitchen in Padraic’s childhood house. LED lights frame the stage and backdrop and help exacerbate the mood of the scenes, straddling the humour and horror as the performance unfolds. McDonagh’s plot brings all of the violence right into the centre of the home in a twisted, macabre manner. It is action-packed, dry and must have had an exhaustible budget for fake blood.
The nuance of McDonagh’s Lieutenant of Inishmore lies in the dark comedy playing into exaggerated tropics of paramilitary groups. It steps into the world of political violence and the holistic effects on peoples lives it can have. Giving the deranged Padraic a lopsided sense of morals and depth invites the audience to ask themselves the looming question of just how far people will go. Each character in their own right is amusing, but with an uncomfortable edge through the humour.
The Lieutenant of Inishmore is a performance you wont forget in a hurry. With its rapidly paced script and action-packed combative scenes, the show never fails to capture the audience’s attention. Brutally funny, the performance quickly deteriorates into all-out havoc and really, it’s a slippery slope from there. Brave when it was first performed in 2001, McDonagh’s show rings out with a slightly different menace over two decades later.
The Lieutenant of Inishmore will be performed at the Liverpool Everyman until 12 October.
Words by Hannah Goldswain.
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