The cat-loving middle-aged female fans of Turner’s ruggedly handsome Ross Poldark in the recent BBC adaptation of the series seemed a little shocked when filing out of the theatre, clutching their coats against the chilly early evening London air. With fear in their eyes they glanced at the teenage girls coming out next to them, deep in conversation about the technical approaches to Grandage’s production, in between giggled mutterings of ‘fecking hell’ in comedic appreciation of the strong-accented swearing that filled the theatre for the best part of 2 hours. Bloodier than Titus Andronicus and almost as foul-mouthed as The Wolf of Wall Street, McDonagh’s play grasps the audiences in its bloody hands, and paralyses them with dark twisting humour, holding them in it’s grip until they begin to relax into the cat-murdering spree and begin to understand the point of the production: the ability to hold an audience captive in order to show them how damaging and futile terrorism is, to change the current media rhetoric of terrorists.
First performed in 2001 by the RSC, awarding-winning writer Martin McDonagh’s critically acclaimed dark Irish satire of terrorism, ‘The Lieutenant of Inishmore’, has made a revival in London’s Noel Coward Theatre on the West End, directed by Michael Grandage and starring BBC favorite Aiden Turner in his West End Debut as Mad Padraic, the Irish terrorist “considered too mad for the IRA”. Set in the Galway of 1993, this production is brilliant and bloody, and the black comedy cuts close to the bone (no pun intended), in relation to the contemporary media attitude towards terrorism.
Grandage has been criticised for playing for laughs, but each blow is placed with utmost comedic timing; the trio of blundering splinter-group terrorists who spend most of their scenes debating whether or not certain quotes can be attributed to Marx, work together like a pack of wolves coming in for the kill, all the blundering is precise, every laugh created at the exact right moment. Comments like “do you know how many cats Cromwell battered in his time?” from the three antagonists, if one could claim that they are the antagonists, poin The slapstick humour incits laughter, but it’s the darker moments where the audience cringe at their own laughter this is where satire is at its best. As the revenge comedy continues into its second hour, the humour gets dryer, the stage gets bloodier and no target is off limits, as Padraic shoots out the eyes of a former colleague he claims that “You never let bygones be bygones, you?” emphasising the contextual importance and the relevance today of the play.
In a recent interview Turner admires McDonagh’s craft "He writes well for fringe characters, people who have been locked in their own world for a long time. That's something you see in Ireland." This reflection is important when we start to question Grandage’s motives for choosing this production for 2018, as the world is starting to descend back into a world of terrorism, through ignorance and ideolistic attitudes, that reflects the chaos that ensued after the Northern Ireland peace process.
Turner’s skilled deadpan expressions as Padraic, and the way he can turn on a sixpence between emotions weaves a character that is as terrifying as is entrancing. His TV and film acting comes through clearly in his facial expression, his well practised Paddington Bear-style ‘hard stare’ used frequently in the production, but his voice projection and use of space show an actor that can do both stage and screen. There are scenes where Turner uses space so effectively that his Padraic is at once worthy of compassion and intimidating.
West End newcomer Chris Walley’s hapless Davey, who is falsely accused of murdering ‘Poor Wee Thomas’, is costumed complete with awkward 80s mullet. Walley’s combination of hysteria and resignation to his fate makes Davey an amiable if a little dull-witted character, and his comedic timing in a duo with Denis Conway’s Donny is spot on. Meanwhile, Charlie Murphy as Mairead, Padraic’s gun-toting admirer is terrifying as it is captivating, her soft voice echoing nationalistic songs around the stage. The physical chemistry between Turner and Murphy was at times wooden, perhaps because of the very conscious avoiding of Turner’s sexual value as the Pride and Prejudice-era Colin Firth of 2018, nevertheless the precision at the verbal blows that Murphey and Turner dealt each other and the way they bounced off the humour around them was superb. Despite the focus of the play being the murder of ‘Poor Wee Thomas’ the precious cat of Mad Padraic, the convincingly unlifelike puppetry (even from a $20 ticket distance) of the murdered cats allows the audience to understand that it was purely a symbol of the futility of violence. The tender care and sentiment that Turner’s Padraic holds for his moggy “put a blanket on him and be stroking and stroking him” provides a sharp contrast to his merciless, nipple-cutting and chip-shop bombing attitudes.
The celtic lilts of Adam Cork’s soundtrack are spellbinding, Neil Austin’s use of lighting is carefully curated to showing the growing tension and the passing of time, realistic sunlight filtering through the windows of the picturesque house of Padraic’s father Donny, a convincingly overprotective-but-exasperated Denis Conway, picturesque that is, until the climatic scene where the pristine conventionally rural-whitewash walls are splattered by blood and dismembered body parts. The juxtaposition between this over-detailed but picturesque setting of the house and the minimal grey-green backdrop that doubles up as the set for fields of Nationalistic songs and for warehouses-of-torture, a set that symbolises both the militaristic and rural elements of the production. The authentic rich Irish accents of the cast all of whom come from the emerald isle, are at times too thick to understand, but give the play a sense of reality that the concept of the production could draw on more. The only other complaint that seems to run through the critics appreciations pouring in for Grandage’s production is the interval between the short acts, which deflated the building tension from the first half.
In the original performance in Stratford-Upon-Avon, audience proximity to the stage caused the full shock of the gore to be felt, but in Grandage’s production, despite this theatre seating around 900, the distance does not matter to the overall gore-factor. The blood is splattered with irony, covering every costume and mangled cat puppet in swathes of crimson by the final scene, and in this Grandage could be trying to show once again the waste of life, the futility of terrorism. How this war is not one to be fought from above because interference causes bloodshed. That the way the war against terrorism is going to be one is by changing the attitudes of the people, and what better way to do that then revitalise a 20-year-old dark Irish Satire, with an audience that varies from normal theatre-goers to the Poldark-obsessed. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri writer McDonagh had once described his script as a violent play that is ‘wholeheartedly anti-violence’. In Grandage’s Lieutenant the cast and production team take this attitude to the extreme, with the sole goal to change the rhetoric in modern media about the terrorist mindset. Critics have suggested that by showing the vanities and sensitivities of Turner’s Padraic is in some way defending his actions, but this is shortsighted. By reversing the modern discourse towards terrorists Grandage highlights what is wrong with the modern media, this contemporary attitude towards these young, idealistic people being indoctrinated into violence means of getting what they want. In a play about cats, both alive and dead, Grandage creates a production that lures the audience in with promise of abs, gore and moggies, and lets them leave with paradoxical ideas about the modern terrorist rhetoric. A superb production, just leave the kiddies at home for this one.
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