Martin McDonagh is probably Ireland's most produced playwright at present, at least in America. His Connemara trilogy--starting with the Tony Award–winning The Beauty Queen of Leenane and continuing with this play and the Sam Shepard–inspired The Lonesome West--has been staged at theatres from coast to coast since he took Broadway by storm in 1996. He takes the sudden random violence found in Shepard's plays, melds it with the constant stream of profanity heard in David Mamet's works, and creates his own distinct style. The big difference is, no matter how brutal the violence or how constant the use of the f-word is, McDonagh's plays are vastly funnier than either Shepard's or Mamet's.
This play revolves around Mick Dowd (Charlie Reindeau). The villagers gossip about him behind his back--and not only because of his annual job of digging up old graves in the church's tiny cemetery to make way for the newly deceased. It seems his wife died a mysterious death seven years back. Mick says it was the result of his drunken-driving accident, but her head injuries could have had another cause. Anyway, she's due to be dug up this year, so the local folk are gossiping again.
Director Forest Aylsworth and his cast of four quickly set the mood of the bleak existence of these tragicomic Irish folk. Elderly widow Mary Rafferty (Grace Delaney) stops by every evening to warm herself at Mick's fire--with a bit of his potent poteen--to share the latest gossip. Her rambunctious grandson Mairtan (Chris Bresky) gets thrown out of choir practice and lands the job as Mick's grave-digging assistant. Mairtan's brother Tom (Christopher White) is the local constable, and he wants to be a police detective. He has it in for Mick, and the conflict simmers throughout until the bloody climax. Aylsworth gently builds the comedy and the tension with his taut direction. The actors have their Irish brogues down pat and easily navigate the line between comedy and tragedy. Justin Bieber's lighting design greatly enhances the moody atmosphere.