One thing that every review of Martin McDonagh’s The Lieutenant of Inishmore contains is a comment about Titus Andronicus.
“McDonagh’s real gift […] is for pushing a situation to its most brutal extreme, and being funny with it. This is Titus Andronicus played for laughs,” writes Michael Billington for The Guardian.
“McDonagh’s play pushes its mockery of them to gleeful extremes and Grandage’s robust, zestful production is wonderfully on its wavelength as it escalates into a splatter-fest that makes Titus Andronicus look like Mary Poppins,” writes Paul Taylor for The Independent.
(“[Lieutenant makes Titus Andronicus] look like the proverbial vicarage tea party,” Michael Billington also wrote way back in 2001 for the original RSC production, so evidently this a fairly standard phenomenon in Lieutenant reviews.)
This should give you some idea about the volume of fake blood that will be pooling onstage by the time we get to curtain call (and the amount of grey hair an ASM is gaining somewhere in the wings). Lieutenant is certainly not a show for the faint of heart and queasy of stomach. But does all this gore and violence serve a constructive purpose in the conversation about the absurdity of terrorism that McDonagh seems to intend for this play to provoke? Or does it just create a grisly spectacle to serve as a backdrop for McDonagh’s witty dialogue so audiences can enjoy a “fun” night at the theatre?
The Lieutenant of Inishmore is a dark comedy about the bloodshed and violence during the Troubles in Ireland. After the murder of his cat, Wee Thomas, Mad Padraic (a man deemed “too crazy” for the IRA) returns home to Inishmore to exact his bloodthirsty revenge on those responsible for the demise of his best friend, regardless of familial ties (and, indeed, actual innocence in the matter). The arrival of three INLA men attempting to assassinate Padraic (and actually responsible for the murder of Wee Thomas) triggers the beginning of a bloodbath that ends with half the characters, Padraic included, dead onstage (some in multiple pieces). It is only after this that Wee Thomas, whole and hale, arrives in the window and we realize the INLA killed the wrong black cat. “All this terror has been for absolutely nothing,” as one character remarks.
It’s a particularly poignant moment, the realization that all this violence has been for nothing. If everyone had just calmed down and tried to communicate with each other, none of this absurd cruelty towards other humans (and cats) would have happened. It’s a powerful message that McDonagh is trying to convey, and one that is just as relevant to the world today as it was in 1994 when Lieutenant was written, or 2001 when it was first performed.
But Lieutenant runs the same risk as Titus – it’s easy to focus on the spectacle and lose the moral (though much of the moral lies in the spectacle). And while masterfully written, beautifully designed, meticulously executed, and generally well-acted, I’m afraid this Lieutenant stands on the brink of falling into the Titus trap by putting the audience at a safe distance behind the protection of laughter and the proscenium arch. If you come to the Noel Coward Theatre looking for a farcical critique of terrorism and violence, it’s certainly there to be found and engaged with in Lieutenant. However, if you’re here because you missed the Globe’s last production of Titus and are looking for a fun night out with friends, it could be very easy to miss this critique amidst the laughter and the spectacle.
