Dark and twisted theatre in The Lieutenant of Inishmore!

Llyod Allison-Young, Patrick Holman and Mark Nagle join Regina to talk about this dark and twisted play by Martin McDonagh.

THE LIEUTENANT OF INISHMORE
BY MARTIN MCDONAGH

“Grit your teeth James. This may hurt.”

Ruthless enforcer “Mad” Padraic Osbourne is considered too crazy for the IRA and he’s sorely trying the patience of his INLA comrades.

Padraic cares about one thing, and one thing only – and it’s not the fight for Irish independence. It’s his little black cat, Wee Thomas.

When he learns that his beloved pet has been killed, Paidraic rushes home tothe island of Inishmore, much to the relief of the Belfast drug-pusher whose nipples he was about to remove.

But as Padraic pursues revenge, and bodies pile up in his wake, his soft spot for Wee Thomas may prove to be his downfall.

This brazen and unapologetically blood-curdling farce combines comedy and violence in a darkly funny portrait of rivalries among terrorists for whom killing, torturing and bombing are just day-jobs.

“One of the greatest and most improbable comedies of the decade”
The Guardian

New Theatre is very excited to be bringing this outrageous black comedy back to Sydney stages, where the blood was last splattered at Belvoir in 2003, marking our third production of a McDonagh play.

Martin McDonagh is an award-winning playwright, director and screenwriter. Though born and brought up in England, his Irish heritage and childhood holidays spent in Galway have been a huge influence on his work.

His first six plays were all set on the west coast of Ireland: the ‘Leenane triology’ (The Beauty Queen of Leenane (New Theatre, 2003), A Skull in Connemara,and The Lonesome West) and the ‘Aran Island trilogy’ (The Cripple of Inishmann, The Lieutenant of Inishmore and the never-produced The Banshees of Inisheer) and they established him as a major voice in English-language theatre. His first non-Irish play was The Pillowman (New Theatre, 2013), and A Behanding in Spokane was his first set in America.

As a director/screenwriter, his films include In Bruges, Seven Psychopaths, and most recently, the award-winning Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.

CREATIVE TEAM
Director  Deborah Mulhall
Set Designer Tom Bannerman  Lighting Designer Priyanka Martin
Sound Designer Patrick Eades  Vision Designer Alex Rowe
Voice/Dialect Coach Gavin Leahy  Assistant Director Mark G Nagle
Props Maker Scott Layton Robertson  Stage Manager Gundega Lapsa
ASMs Che Walsh- Kemp, Chantelle von Appen, Victoria Lewis
Sound Assistant Patrick Blacker Operators Ole Borch, Becky Matthews