Hallucinations of Martin McDonagh
The first part: Instinctive behaviours toward the dramaturgical script
Martin McDonagh, the Irish-born British dramatist, screenwriter and filmmaker, possesses familiarity with short feature film Six Shooter (2004), full-length feature films In Bruges (2008), Seven Psychopaths (2012), Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017), and The Banshees of Inisherin (2022), which have reached a wide audience. The screenplays of his films in the genres of black comedy, tragicomedy, and crime drama may be regarded as narrative logic of the dramatic structure peculiar to McDonagh’s theatrical works, and distinctive dramaturgical style.
The plays like The Banshees of Inisherin, The Cripple of Inishmaan (1996), and The Lieutenant of Inishmore (2001), included in his Aran Islands trilogy (even though the play remained unpublished, the film was shot on the basis of The Banshees of Inisherin), The Beauty Queen of Leenane (1996), A Skull in Connemara (1997), and The Lonesome West (1997) from The Leenane Trilogy, and othersincluding The Pillowman (2003), A Behanding in Spokane (2010), Hangmen (2015)and A Very Very Dark Matter (2018) have been brought to the stage countless times in theatres internationally.
The 21st dramaturgy is characterised by the liberation of the dramatic text from pathos, a calm and measured response to the most exalted idea and concepts, more agile and laconic dialogues. Language is one of the most important factors that sustains the vitality of dramaturgy and shapes its dynamic flow. In dramas, the more the words equate to action, the more agile the language, the faster the dynamics of the events. In this regard, McDonagh’s plays, characterized by non-standard lexicon and dialogues that verge on the absurd, are very energic and sometimes, breathtaking. In the 1990s, the in-yer-face theatre movement emerged in British theatre and became one of the most frequently explored directions by young playwrights due to its explicit portrayal of violence, murder, various addictions, and psychological and physical dysfunction.
It can be asserted that Martin McDonagh, who began his journey into dramaturgy around the same period, leans in this direction based on the thematic concerns and dramaturgical language in his plays. However, in our article, we aim to refrain from confining the author’s plays within the framework of any theoretical categories. Since, it is pointless tocategorize them under any certain “-isms” in discussing McDonagh’s plays. These plays, in a sense, reflect the inverted face of life and sometimes the truths we cannot confess due to socially accepted boundaries. In his plays, the author completely abstains from passing judgement, teaching the audience and conveying ideas through symbolic signs. McDonagh’s characters do not convey ideological messages and absolutely hold no claims.
Perhaps for this reason, a chain of successive suicides and murders in the plays are rendered as entirely ordinary events. Upon reading at least two of the author’s plays, in which death is treated as ordinary, the rescue occurs when death seems inevitable or vice versa, the death strikes when the rescue is anticipated, any foresight sense regarding to the plot’s progression vanishes. The incidents unfold as if the bullets released from an automatic firearm. In McDonagh’s plays, the characters stand poised to resort to any measure to protect and express themselves. This situation arises from the psychological discomfort lurking in the subconscious of character who acts one way on the surface while experiencing something else inside. We will attempt to clarify the reasons of these characters being in a state of discomfort. Throughout the events depicted in the plays comprising the Aran Islands trilogy, the Irish Civil War persist as a constant backdrop highlighting the processes by which war dehumanizes individuals, disrupts their emotions and instils cruelty. In The Lieutenant of Inishmore, physical and moral terror among diverse factions arisen amid the civil war escalates to its utmost extent. “The death” of Little Thomas, the cat belonging to Padraic, one of the faction leaders intensifies the conflict between Padraic’s father, Donny, and the islander, Davey. As a result of discomfort engendered by the war, every person is on the brink of assigning blame each other: Padraic, who effortlessly executes people and transforms into a killer, holds a grudge against the cat’s murderer. Because he discerns significance in each step which he has taken. Padraic, who regards the fighting for Ireland’s freedom as a core value and poises to gun down anyone who defames this freedom and exhibits any hint of uncertainty, turns the innocent cat’s death into a tragedy. When it becomes apparent that the killed cat was not Little Thomas in the last scene that all the uproar was in vain, highlighting the absurdity of wars and indicating that everything falls victim to human animalistic instincts. Even he decides to shoot his own father for the sake of this cause. McDonagh’s plays are, to some extent, poetic affirmation of the relativity theory: there is no absolute truth in life – a truth embraced by one group may seem deformity, ugliness for others. Is it possible to justify Padraic who punished the dealer selling narcotics to children and tested him with every imaginable form of physical cruelty and a variety of punishment methods? The dramatist refrains from giving clear answers and the decisive points in the story arise from infinite situations. The fact that characters are pedantically honest in specific situations also results in the distortion of their conduct. The most impeccable choice at first glance transforms into the gravest choice. The value of a person’s trust, loyalty, and promised word can be under destruction in a single sentence: “Donny and Davey do not act as foreshadowed by Padraic’s fear. Instead, each begins to “play” for their self-survival. Therefore, this happens under the command of human instinct for the self-preservation. The apparent disorders observed on the first reading, the interruptive dialogues generate a chaotic atmosphere. The characters’ instinct-driven reactions create chaos: compliance with the pre-agreed norms that constitute the cultural (cosmic) conditions shatters under the smallest, swiftest strike. Discipline and adherence to rules are immediately displaced by instinctual behaviour. Padraic’s pragmatism contradicts the instinctual behaviours of Donny and Davey: the desire “living of untamed cats in free Ireland” points essentially to the unfettered liberty. The idea of motherland where the cats are untamed and free is more pragmatic. The portrayal of a cat’s life as more valuable than that of a human, combined with the lack of distinction between a living human and their corpse, reduces the human to nothing more than a mere piece of flesh. It arises from the relentless physical destruction of the oppressed in conflict and the gradual moral decay of those who endure.
In the play “The Cripple of Inishmaan”, the human sense of faith in the future is tested in the depths of moral and material decay, mire in which the character wrestled. The inhabitants of the isolated island of Inishmaan survive largely through instinct and practical routines. In the struggle to survive, an immediate escape from this moral and material mire initially presents itself as the most optimal means. The physical disability of Cripple Billy, whose renders him a constant object of ridicule, further complicates his already arduous existence within this mire. Billy fulfils his parents’ long-cherished dream to escape from the island, but his attempt, which results in disappointment, compels him to reconsider: Is the escape not truly way out? Is one’s birthplace really one’s destiny with all its misery, inescapability, quagmire, and weariness?
Generally, McDonagh’s characters suffer from the syndrome of acquired disability whether considered from visible or hidden viewpoint. So, the characters’ physical disability is mirrored by moral impairment. However, nobody seems interested in sermons about moral impairments. There exists grotesque incongruity between the deeds and the words of all these ruthless cripples, “compassionate Christians” who can recite every line of the Bible and every word of Christ by heart. Black humor expressed as main means in the plays of Martin McDonagh emerges just in this moment as well. If humor arises from the comic exposure of some flaws and absurdities, in black humor these incongruities are grotesquely exaggerated, negates all exalted emotions reducing the object of humor to a degraded state. As in his other plays, McDonagh orchestrates unforeseen twists in the climax of this play. In the course of the play, the “A compassionate Christian”, chatterbox Johnnypateenmike, whose boredom makes him transform everyday trivialities into newsworthy events, reveals the depths of his genuine compassion through act of kindness performed years ago, discreetly hidden from all. Johnny’s invented lie about that Bill had been rescued with the life-insurance money his parents received after having suicided themselves restores his will to live and his faith in human. The truth, that he was the one who saved Billy, is never spoken by Johnny. To remain faithful in the midst of profanities and to believe by cursing reveal that Johnnypateenmike’s incessant chatter is, in fact, a mask hiding the depth of his true self. The central idea of the play which lies in a world where ugliness is shouted, while acts of kindness are whispered in the shadows, resonates with the Biblical injunction “Do good deeds, but in secret!” Though he suffers the hail of stones and humiliation from the very Billy he saved, his silence about having once saved Billy — sacrificing himself for Billy’s sake evokes Johnnypateenmike a profound parallel with Christ. The widespread distrust prevalent today, even the most convincing facts are presumed to be backstaged, deal a serious blow to social relations. Trusting no one and living without relying on anyone lead to an endless void. In his essay on Chekhov’s “The Black Monk,” Rahim Aliyev states that Kovrin perceives the shattering of his inner faith in his own genius, undermined by Tanya, her father, and the doctors, as a tragedy —the disintegration of his personality. The shattering of his inner faith, the destruction of your personality and rejection of your impressions by the closest person to you leads to behavioural disorders. McDonagh’s characters resist those who suppress the worlds existed within their minds, seek to impose social norms in every possible way, confine them to social classes. What leads some scholars interpret McDonagh’s texts as not merely literary works but as texts embodying Irish myths and folklore? These texts contain neither explicit mythic characters, nor ethnic traditions. However, the most crucial point in these texts is the individual mindset, the typical Irish way of perceiving the world. This also presents McDonagh’s characters on both a contemporary and a mythic realm. In McDonagh’s plays, the characters resemble nightmares and hallucinations (phantasms) through instinctive conductions and spontaneous reactions. If we consider carefully, the characters in McDonagh’s works, at first glance, exhibit an apparent syndrome of collective cognitive deficiency. Though the superficial, sometimes excessively naïve dialogues appear grounded in the logic of a child just beginning to grasp the world, ultimately, the initial simplicity is replaced by the sudden clear-headedness.
- ”He asked the stone how Bill, the cripple, was doing in the US?
- But what did the stone reply?
- The stone did not answer, Helen, because the stones said nothing.
- I thought Mrs. Osborne was speaking on behalf of the stone.
- No, she had spoken only in her own stead”
The abovementioned dialogue featured in the play “The Cripple of Inishmaan” serves as an example of involuntary, disciplined resistance.
Nevertheless, if these awkward behaviours and insignificant dialogues, at first sight, are the surge of instincts, the playwright is engaged in regulating each act of breach of order to the structured system of the dramatic text. Since the dramatic text has its own order and structure, the clash between instinctive reactions and dramatic logic surfaces vividly in the characters’ dialogues. To grasp the modern dramaturgy in McDonagh’s artistic work, it becomes possible for it to serve as one of the pivotal keys at this stage: Fundamentally, an attempt to bring structure to the instinctive, chaotic behaviours of drama, which form the basis of action and activity.
The second part: black humor as an expression of personal freedom
People constantly strive to express themselves and be understood. However, certain restrictions and boundaries cause mutations at human psychology and prompt individuals to explore alternative ways of self-expression. At such times, the individual strives to protect himself or herself, and this self-preservation is usually expressed in two ways: either by retreating inward or by openly challenging boundaries, rebelling against all written, conventions and codes. Individuality emerges in the form of their self-expression by defying societal norms and existing laws. The characters in Martin McDonagh’s plays endeavour to protect their personal liberties to the maximum extent and express this will through various methods: homicide, act of violence, insult is often initial reactions of the character in case of sensing a danger to their personal liberty. If the stated behaviours are directly reflected in actions, the verbal-communicative aspect of this mode of self-expression is manifested in black humor.
Although the term “black humor” can be found in different sources, it aligns historically with the emergence of the Surrealists’ manifestos in its principal usage. Andre Breton, the French writer, poet and the founder of surrealism adopted the expression “black humor” as a term. He compiled the famous “Anthology of Black Humor” based on texts in which he observed the early manifestations of this concept and stated that the history of black humor began specifically with the Anglo-Irish writer Jonathan Swift. The Irish-origin playwright Martin McDonagh’s recourse to black humor arose from the firmly established roots of black humor in Irish literature. The transformative effects of Civil War on human psychology and behaviour lead to the expression of inescapability through humor. Generally, the occurrence of laughter is closely tied to extreme impasse. From this perspective, the boundary between comedy and tragedy is remarkably delicate, and at times, imperceptible. The concept of black humor, which André Breton, the founder of Surrealism, aimed to introduce into critical discourse is not devoid of surrealist elements either. Since the situation at the core of black humor is inherently a taboo, it contains a surreal motif in ordinary perception. Doesn’t the presentation of “the unfunny as funny” signal the inherent surrealism at the heart of black humor? The pain and anguish that embodied in the word “black” manifest itself within the expression “black humor”. Apart its hint at the “underground” spirit of humor, also speaks to the identity of the humorist — one metaphorically clad in black, immersing in an inner mourning. Freud’s approach to humor asserts our thought (that humor is a quiet proclamation of one’s individuality) as well. Freud, linking the magnificence of laughter and wit to the triumph of the narcissistic “I”, posits the dominance the ego in laughter. In this regard, drawing a parallel between the EGO and the INDIVIDUAL, the essence of laughter unveils a motive to assert superiority over others. The expression of individual liberty through black humor originates from the conviction of the ego’s superiority and an intense passion to eliminate “any barriers” obstructing its path.
Although black-skinned people (of afro-descendant) have long subjected to political oppression, their preservation of inner liberty, the reflection in the “ease” and “free” of their self-expression, their strong valuation of individualities interpret “black humor” as having a parallel meaning to the expression “free humor.”
To associate the black humor in the plays written by McDonagh with the characters’ use of vulgar or explicit language is utterly mistaken. The origin of black humor lies precisely in the psychological states of these characters – discrepancy between internal anguish and the life they physically experience. From this perspective, the use of black humor in the playwright’s “The Leenane” trilogy reaches its peak. In The Beauty Queen of Leenane, the initial play of “The Leenane” trilogy, we observe the collapse of the parental-mother cult. The happenings between Maureen and her mother, Mag, expose, with all its abnormalities, a deterioration of the parent-child relationship to a pathological level and how they poison one another’s lives. As in all plays authored by McDonagh, when human and personal freedom is threatened, individuals’ primal, savage instincts such as to kill or to demean emerge regardless of the other’s identity. This chain reaction continues like a curse – after her mother’s death, the daughter steps into her mother’s shadow. Already under the weight of subjugation, Maureen assumes her mother’s role by mirroring her every action (even after her mother’s dies, she casts aside all the meals she loved). It becomes impossible to escape from her past and bondage. Oppositely, with one hand, he frees his feet from the shackles, while with the other he fastens the same shackle around his neck. In societies where the the cult of parents —both mother and father—is deeply ingrained, what purpose is served by mocking profound emotions or ridiculing noble ideals and values? Laughter, at its core, contains not just humor but also the capacity for protest. This protest is evident in McDonagh’s plays, which serve as protests against absolutism. The author might seem to oppose values and exalted ideals at first sight. In fact, he objects the “absolute holiness” of these values. Insomuch as when any value becomes absolute and it turns into a fetish, it inevitably leads to conduct that borders on the absurd. The way to escape from such an absurdity is to fall into place and to give everybody their dues: a mother should be value not merely for the title she holds, but for carrying out her maternal functions. Focusing on fulfilling the moral principles instead of biological functions plays a decisive role in evaluating human behavior. For this reason, a dual attitude toward the individual and the exploration of multiple potential causes of the events within the play while each character articulates their own persuasive proves engender a continuous suspicion in the reader’s mind, rendering the verdicts of ‘guilty or innocent’ ineffective. This impact leads to ambiguous situations, such as whether Mick kills his wife or not and whether attempts to kill his assistant Martin in the second play of the Leenane trilogy, A Skull in Connemara. After a definite period, Mick, the gravedigger, exhumes the bones from existing graves to prepare the ground for new burials. However, at his own wife’s grave, he refuses to do so. Martin, the gravedigger’s assistant who declares that “human rights must not be violated”, moreover speaks of human rights and liberty as supreme values. He repeatedly utters the thought that no religion, law, or supreme legislative authority precedes human rights. Though the police officer, Thomas, who exhumed the skull of Mick’s wife from the grave, strives for a promotion by violating the ethical code of conduct, the culmination of the play prescribes the punishment even for those who treat with “disrespect” a person whose bones remain in the grave. By overcoming the challenges confronting the journey toward inner freedom systematically, it discovered its echo in the third play of the trilogy “The Lonesome West”, embodying purification. Following the demise of their father, the Coleman and Valene Connor brothers started to live under one roof within the terms of their mutual understanding. They make an effort to express meticulously the grudge and hatred they have borne against each other at every possible moment over the years.
The priest Fr. Welsh, who charged with overseeing the observance of God’s commandments, experiences the humiliation of failing to fulfil the mission in the presence of the community, under the watchful gaze of Galway County’s residents. In the province, two murders happen in quick succession, yet to this day, no one has come forward to the Holy Father to confess. The series of crimes in the “Leenane” trilogy – the possible killings, Mick of his wife, Maureen of her mother and Coleman of his father disrupts Father Welsh’s inner balance, already shaken by his wavering faith (there is evidence both supporting and contradicting the claims of who committed these murders). The events in which brothers erupt in verbal strife, young women serve alcohol, two (or possibly three) murderers remain unpunished, and a policeman commits suicide drive him, weary of his futility in Galway County, to end his life by carrying the fragile hope of bringing the brothers together as a last possible remedy. In a place haunted by the devil’s presence, after the death of Welsh, who wrote in his letter that he would embrace every pain as his own, the brothers begin to confess to resolve the conflict between the brothers and to rekindle the fraternal feelings (and, in truth, in pursuit of his personal salvation). In other sense, formally there is no need for anyone (social institute and others) to confess and to be purified. Genuine confession unfolds both in the presence of the one against whom guilt is felt and within the human psyche itself. This confessional game leads to purification of the resentment and hatred the brothers have carried since their childhood. However, the activation of this mechanism occurs at the expense of victims. The father is murdered by his son; the detective tasked with uncovering the truth behind the murder, commits suicide, and as if that were not enough, the Holy Father himself, weary of his uselessness, commits suicide. Absolute liberty, arbitrariness, and the very cognizance of this absoluteness demesmerize the person. The individuals (here, the brothers) are purified from all ugliness, deformity, and savage passions, rediscovering the human core within. After the collapse of legality embodied by the police and the removal of the religious authority represented by the Holy Father, the humanity regains its personal freedom. While using dark humor, even though he tackles the most sensitive matters with cynicism, mocks death, murder, physical deformities, human imperfections, and “undermines” the exalted values such as religion and family bonds, the melancholy inherent in McDonagh’s plays actually shows where sanctity resides. Compelling others to believe in something you yourself do not truly believe in is nothing but hypocrisy. The Holy Father’s suicide is an act of defiance against exactly this hypocrisy. The Holy Father, who rebels against God’s commandments, by ending his life, he ultimately proves the intensity of his inner faith. The facts, in which McDonagh’s characters are remarkably apart from falseness and hypocrisy, relate to those, which they fail to need anything for their awareness of personal freedom. Because when someone truly grasps his inner freedom, there is no longer any reason for duplicity or hypocrisy. One of the plays where individualist ideology comes through with the greatest intensity is “A behanding in Spokane”. Following the childhood accident in which his hand was cut off at the wrist by a train, the one-handed Carmichael—both physically and morally crippled—spends his time searching for his missing hand and attempts to heal his lifelong trauma. The author perceives the trauma of the severed hand not simply as a bodily wound, but also as a homicide against the property inherent to human beings.
Just as a person’s hand belongs solely to them, any form of intrusion or coercion against a person’s fundamental desires and requirements is perceived as an act of crime. The human being finds moral justification for every action, at least for the sake of self-defence and at most, the reclamation of the lost right. Searching corpse dealers for severed hand, Carmichael has become brutalized under the instinctive reflex of self-defence. Though he avenges those who severed his hand, he fails to reconcile with his loss and finds it difficult to comprehend the cause of his disability. This directly results in behavioural disorders. Naturally, if you deprive a person of their most basic inner demand — personal freedom (in this case, this is the loss of his hand), he will hunger for other hands (the one-handed man carries hands of bag by hoping to reclaim his own (even some of them ripped from his arm)).
Harry, the executioner in the play “Hangmen”, after leaving his profession as an executioner, must reckon with whether Hennessy, the man he once hanged, was innocent. Since the act of committing suicide does not occur out of personal desire (professionally, Harry is an executioner, performs the orders given to him without hesitation or doubt.) but is dictated by command, Harry justifies his actions, appeasing his conscience in the process.
The killing of Mooney (the man who actually committed the murder for which Hennessey had been accused) — whom Harry suspects to be responsible for his daughter’s disappearance and he suspects of being involved in her death – unfolds as a result of Harry’s thirst for revenge. Harry’s daughter Shirley’s disappearance is merely an excuse. From the start, Harry who executes (hangs) a man not by the resolution of the court but by his own will, he kills the true murderer, Mooney. Thus, he restores the justice.
While Javanshir Yusifli refers to the comedies of Uzeyir Hajibeyli, there exists an unwritten rule in Uzeyir Hajibeyli’s comedic world that whoever is serious becomes the first target of laughter. In these comedies, in order to instil profoundly serious ideas, seriousness itself is first dethroned. He notes that the very semantic core and energy of “seriousness” are deliberately dismantled. This causes Martin McDonagh’s dark humor subjects considered taboo by society to be stripped of their taboo status. To laugh at “serious, inviolable” subjects or objects marks the initial step toward exposing their true essence. Black humor, functioning as a touchstone, reveals its true essence by stripping away the veil that shrouds the object. The warmth of friendly laugh at the core “darkens” in black humor.
An infringement upon man’s instinctive needs and fundamental rights requires a counter-offensive plan regarding as an intrusion into one’s personal space. A chain of murders that perpetuate each other throughout the plays occur mostly on this ground. In McDonagh’s plays, the author’s stance and narrative perspective remain unseen to us: the infinite sequence of situations and “suspicious” finales that the author is neutral are the main features of these plays. However, the author’s detachment and neutrality are groundless. Generally, in the context of black humor, the author imposes a dictate on “making the people laugh while remaining outside the common process of laughter.” (Andre Breton made this statement regarding Jonathan Swift’s humor.) We perceive the author solely in the role of a detached observer. The author maintains his composure even when he unleashes a verbal sting and makes the characters (and the reader) laugh. Following the author’s isolation from the events, the text endows dynamism. If the rhythm of the text in which the author directly or indirectly has correlated unfolds slowly in prose, becomes photographic (capturing the moment) in poetry, the rapid succession of dialogues in drama transforms the stage into a field of dynamic visual narration. In this respect, McDonagh doesn’t partake in his characters’ anguish, even amid blood-chilling scenes of murder, he never blinks — he “conducts” the rhythm of his cruel and “darkly humorous” marionettes (puppets)… and others…
The process of reading, in the words of Umberto Eco, emerges on the basis of a mutual “agreement” or understanding between the reader and the author. A reader, relying on the author, traces the unfolding of the narrative, the action-based story. On this point, the reading of a dramatic text differs somewhat from the reading of texts belonging to other literary genres. The author skillfully “manipulates” the reader under the guise of characters. However, Martin McDonagh pushes the reader’s trust to its very limits by abusing this “manipulation”. In the play “The Pillowman”, the mirrors reflected in one mirror evoke an infinity that compels the reader to constantly question their trust in the text, in every new situation.
The central narrative of the play The Pillowman revolves around the investigation into Katurian Katurian’s intellectual property, specifically his stories. The playwright’s terrifying stories regarding to “humiliated and insulted” kids provide the investigators with clues to uncover the supposedly committed murders. Escalation of the psychological trauma to its breaking point against the backdrop of the interrogation of the author and his brother results in the loss of trust in interpersonal relationships and the collapse of criteria between truths and lies. To define the commencement and compilation of the edge where reality meets fabrication, the playwright traps the participants of the investigation and his readers in a psychological dead-end.
As previously mentioned, we referred to the third option — suicide — as an exceptional case while touching on the reactions to the infringement of individual freedom. The central plotline of the play The Pillowman focuses on a killing committed by the fictional tale figure, the Pillowman, under the guise of an “unfortunate incident.” These despair-laden, terrifying and infamous stories reflect Katurian’s philosophical mindsets on life and childhood traumas. Katurian, by aiming to prevent not only the realized assaults on human will and individual freedom but also those, which appear as potential attacks, envisions that human life as irrevocably doomed to hopelessness, during the development of “The Pillowman”. The differences between the two worldviews are clearly highlighted in a series of stories that glimmer with hope at the end of the most brutal depiction, written by Topolski, the investigator conducting the inquiry. They are also evident in the writer Katurian’s stories, which brim with despair that culminates in horrifying murders and suicides, yet are conveyed through deceptively innocent depictions.
“A Very Very Very Dark Matter,” a play written by McDonagh, which employs phantasmagorical elements, in terms of its structure, differs from his other plays, and presents the character Hans Christian Andersen whose personal life was controversial, in a way that is distinctly its own. The fairy tales, all written by the enslaved Pygmy woman Marjory (Mbute) and published under Andersen’s name are, in fact, fragments of the infinite tales unfolding within the mind of a crippled storyteller, condemned to live inside a tiny glass box. The Pygmy woman, devoted to crafting stories that reverse time and envision the liberation of her native Congo from Belgian colonial rule, sees the salvation of her people—the Congolese—as the sole path to overcoming her own tragedy. Martin McDonagh’s plays recall the terrifying vignettes of wooden puppets: the beating, yet bloodless hearts devoid of signs of life, the eyes that gaze emptily, lifelessly and sometimes are cruelly removed, the limbs – fingers, hands and feet – severed, disfigured but completely feeling no pain are crafted from wood. During the initial readings of the plays, the characters evoking phantoms and nightmares harden into “wooden” effigies over several readings. The fact that those who inspire hope to the last moments have been revealed ultimately as killers, or, conversely, that those who are suspected of committing the most terrifying murders have been acquitted, stems from the puppet master’s profound understanding of human psychology and social behaviour. One of McDonagh’s dramaturgical works is characterised with the narrative’s icy objectivity even referencing the loftiest concepts as if spoken “beyond the wall.” It is apparent that the cast of these plays originates from specific locations across Ireland including Inishmore, Inishmaan, Spokane Galway, Lenane and Connemara. McDonagh’s plays, which reflect a single day in the life of the Irish people while simultaneously revealing the intimacy in the ethnic and psychological details of all nations through the ages, possess the same kind of universality found in Ulysses. Seen though this lens, McDonagh’s dramaturgy can be regarded both as a “Saga of Ireland” and as a set of metaphorical–associative maps of the modern world owing to its incorporation of Irish folklore, cultural psychology, societal norms, and historical context.
Shahana Urfan