A Small Mind At The Theatre

While Martin McDonagh is now making quite a name for himself as a screenwriter, director and producer of hit films like Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri , he started off a writer for the stage, like this play The Beauty Queen of Leenane , the first of a trilogy set in County Galway. And while McDonagh himself has said he has "respect for the whole history of films and a slight disrespect for theatre", it doesn't stop him writing pretty impressive plays like this one. Having previously seen McDonagh's The Pillowman at The Playhouse, and an excellent version of Hangmen via NT Live, I was well aware of McDonagh's dark humour. Beauty Queen maintains that edge, with its tale of spinster Maureen, and her relationship with her oppressive and demanding mother Mag, ill, but still outwardly manipulative of events. It's dark, not quite as dark as The Pillowman perhaps, but like that play, features one truly disturbing torture scene, so, it's not fo...

The Pillowman sounds such a friendly title, and to be fair, his story is one of the lighter aspects of Martin McDonagh's script. It still involves dead children though, if you want to get a clear vision of how dark this play is. Set in a police state of the future, Katurian (Toby Pugh) is taken in for the content of his often violent stories and a similarity to a spate of recent child killings. Here in detention cell 13, his police captors, Tupolski (Adrian Wyman) and Ariel (Steve While) play good cop, bad cop while holding over the threat of violence against Katurian's mentally disabled brother Michal (Patrick Morgan), being held in another cell. The Pillowman is clearly a very warped story, with the blackest of black comedy, and often also very offensive with it's racial stereotyping and disability. In fact, it is no surprise that a couple left in the interval, as I would happily admit that this play is far from everyone. I like a good black comedy though, and ...