Reviews

Jane Coyle reviews Martin McDonagh's The Lonesome West in Belfast's Lyric Theatre, while Mary Leland was in Cork for the Janus Theatre Company's presentation of of King Lear.

The Lonesome West, Lyric Theatre, Belfast

Three murders, two suicides and an unprovoked fatal assault on a dog in a tiny remote village in Connemara . . . it's not what you'd call the stuff of comedy. But away out in the bleak wastes of Martin McDonagh's lonesome west, such incidents are considered commonplace, to be pondered upon, fought over and, yes, laughed about.

Bachelor brothers Valene (Frank McCusker) and Coleman (Lalor Roddy) Connor have been engaged in such pursuits for many a year. We encounter them on the day of their father's funeral, an event overshadowed by a heated debate about the absence of vol-au-vents at the post-burial gathering. These are men who survive on a diet of potato crisps and poteen, their warring existence punctuated by Val's obsession with strange purchases - holy statues, bottles of illicit booze, trashy magazines and an unused gleaming orange stove, all carefully marked with the initial 'V' to denote possession. As he minces in and out, delightedly pulling his latest acquisition out of a string shopping bag, the penniless Coleman eyes him balefully, his whole demeanour registering downtrodden, dominated and lost for love.

In Mikel Murfi's scorchingly truthful production - an association between the Lyric and An Grianán in Letterkenny - McCusker and Roddy are brilliantly unafraid about shining light into the darkest recesses of this grotesque, terrifying world, squabbling and scrapping to the brink of death, as though to prove to themselves and each other that they are still alive.

Thankfully, there is one moral conscience in the community, but it is a troubled, despairing one, broodingly captured by Enda Kilroy's Father Welsh, whose departure paves the way to a reconciliation of sorts between the brothers. And there is hope, too, in Charlene McKenna's sharp-tongued Girleen, a bright spark, which one fears will not burn too long in this God-forsaken place.

Sabine Dargent's set of bare boards and shabby furniture evokes a grey, storm-lashed landscape enclosing a simmering domestic cauldron, in which two middle-aged men finally expose themselves as the bully boy and cowering victim they have been since childhood. The laughter stops when one realises that this is the way it will always be. - Jane Coyle

• At the Lyric until 15 October, then tours to Tallaght, Galway, Armagh, Cookstown, Coleraine, Longford, Portlaoise, Dún Laoghaire and Letterkenny

King Lear, Half Moon Theatre, Cork

This Janus Theatre Company presentation is, at the very least, honest. The big scenes - the storm, or the battle, for example - don't come off despite the expansion of the stage by designer Davy Dummigan. But the big performance by John O'Flynn as Lear makes such dissatisfactions almost irrelevant. Over-produced at times, over-wrought at others, this yet draws out the core of the character, managing with something approaching grace the graduated fluctuations from eccentricity to senility to mania.

Sane, the king is maddening; mad, he is tragic, for O'Flynn keeps alive and potent that glittering potential for rationality. He also maintains the play's crucial issues: the abuse of power, sibling rivalries, erroneous expectations of love and its very nature, the human responsibilities of mankind.

These complex contrasts challenge any editor anxious to mould the play to the constraints of a small theatre and they defeat director Belinda Wild, largely because of casting deficiencies: Tracy Harper gives a convincing Regan but cannot quite disguise herself as Edgar, a character almost as critical to the play as Lear. Adrian Scanlon is a weak Edmund but a good Fool, and unfortunately Cordelia is so far beyond Rosie O'Regan's capabilities - or perhaps experience - as to seem to justify her eviction from Lear's court. Apart from O'Flynn's acute phrasing there is little verse, but these are not failures of intent, but of capacity. Although not completely irrelevant, they do not weaken the power of the play, which is embellished by Ian Wild's sound design. - Mary Leland

• Various dates at Half Moon until Oct 21, but also at The Helix in Dublin and in Macroom, Fermoy and Skibbereen