The Cripple of Inishmaan by Martin McDonagh

Before he was the Oscar-winning long term boyfriend of acclaimed James Bond screenwriter Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Martin McDonagh was a – and I don’t think there’s really a better adjective than this – cheeky playwright.

Having read and enjoyed three of his early plays a few months ago, I stumbled upon (i.e. found while looking at a bookshelf) a copy of this one at my in-laws – The Cripple of Inishmaan (1996) – and it seemed like a potential great companion to a day’s five minute bursts of reading time. (I suppose it was.)

Though, having read it, the cheekiness of McDonagh’s early career becomes more apparent, as this play very very much is… ahh… more of the same, even to the point where sometimes the dialogue of this play (which I’m 95% plus certain I’ve neither seen nor read before) feels very familiar, so much so that I found myself wondering if the same lines and gags are used elsewhere in his oeuvre…

But I don’t think so, I just think that he found some themes, a tone, a style and a rhythm – interpersonal violence in poor, rural, non-contemporary Ireland with whipcrackin’ gags – that worked very well for him, and he pounded those out for long enough until the well had run dry… And then he moved on to the famously brilliant Six Shooter and In Bruges and went on from there…

An excerpt:

BOBBY. You’re too kind-hearted is your trouble, Cripple Billy. Cows don’t mind you throwing things at them. I threw a brick at a cow once and he didn’t even moo, and I got him bang on the arse.

BILLY. Sure that’s no evidence. He may’ve been a quiet cow.

I mean, yeah, y’know, right, yeah, it’s the good, solid, gags that we all like to see. Yes, it’s funny. Yes, it’s dark. Yes, it’s rural. It’s got that rhythm, it’s got that style. You know what you’re going to get – McDonagh delivers.

And that joke about quiet cows is exactly the kinda joke that the play – all of these plays (there are those three I’ve read and at least one more (maybe multiple?) and also a highly acclaimed motion picture, too, innit (The Banshees of Inisherin, 2022) from a couple of decades later) thrive on. Cuz they are funny. The laughs do work!

But this play in particular, how is it?

This one? Not quite as violent as the others (there is violence), not quite as cruel as the others (there is cruelty), not quite as insular as the others (a character does leave to go have a screen test in Hollywood but doesn’t get the part and doesn’t stick around), not quite as bleak as the others (though someone does seem to have a kinda personal growth but then seems to end up contracting a mortal dose of TB (is TB something that in the 1930s it was possible to recover from, or was it then (is it now?) a death sentence?)…

Yes, they’re not all the same, that wouldn’t be fair to say. But they are similar, though it’s fair to say that the formula worked…

–///–

So, ya ya ya, short post overall because I’ve probably already said everything (not much) I needed or wanted to say about early McDonagh.

But, tbh, if/when I stumble across any of his other scripts on bookshelves I’ll happily read them because they are funny, they are fun, and, well, yeah, they’re good enough, innit.

Very much good enough.