The Lieutenant of Inishmore at Berkeley Rep

Fri, May 8 - I made a quick trip to the San Francisco Bay Area this weekend to see some theater and ballet, and to enjoy the California spring weather. One of the plays that I saw there was Martin McDonagh's The Lieutenant of Inishmore, in a production at Berkeley Repertory Theatre directed by Les Waters.

It's a gory, bloody play - so ridiculously gory that you aren't left with any choice but to laugh at the increasing carnage on stage. By the end, blood is splattered across the walls and puddled on the floor - to say exactly how it got there would ruin the fun.

The play is an allegory of sorts about the ridiculousness of the violence in the Irish rebellion movement in the 80s and 90s. The events are triggered by the killing - accidental or otherwise - of the main character Padriac's cat. Padriac is the founder of an I.R.A. splinter group that has gone even more rogue thanks to Padriac's extreme violent tendencies - tendencies which including extreme torture and guiltless, arbitrary killing. Padriac's one weakness is his cat, whom he loves dearly, and anyone who does anything wrong to his cat can only expect the worst punishment. When Padriac finds out that his beloved cat is dead, carnage ensues.

A large part of the play's "theater" is anticipation of the gore. When I saw it, the audience audibly gasped and flinched whenever a knife got close to someone on stage. I saw several people around me bringing their programs up to cover their eyes. However, by the time the play finally gets around to revealing its point - it's a macabre romp until the last five minutes - things end up feeling anticlimactic and insubstantial compared to the massive bloodbath that we have just witnessed onstage.

Photo: James Carpenter, Blake Ellis and Adam Farabee in Berkeley Repertory Theatre's production of Martin McDonaugh's The Lieutenant of Inishmore. Photo by Kevin Berne.