Monday, November 2, 1998
Audience aches for witty Å’Cripple of Inishmaan’
THEATER: Premiere of deadpan Irish comedy at Geffen Playhouse
features comic insults, quirky plot
By Cheryl Klein
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
Before the title character in "The Cripple of Inishmaan" hobbles
onto stage, his beloved aunties discuss their nephew and give us a
taste of what’s to come.
"Billy does have a sweet face, if you ignore the rest of him,"
says Kate (Barbara Tarbuck).
Eileen (Dearbhla Molloy) considers for a moment, then concludes
in high-pitched brogue, "He doesn’t really."
And these are the women who raised him.
Right from the start, it’s clear that Martin McDonagh’s small
town comedy, enjoying its West Coast premiere through Nov. 22 at
the Geffen Playhouse, is more "Fargo" than "Andy Griffith." An
ensemble of nine well-matched actors deliver McDonagh’s ruthless
jabs and ironic gossip with deadpan quirk only an audience could
love.
Inishmaan, an island off Ireland’s west coast, is a great place
to visit, but a stifling place to live in 1930s, especially if
you’re Billy  Cripple Billy to the pre-politically correct
townsfolk. It’s never dawned on the motley and only marginally
likable group that this is not his preferred nomenclature. It’s
easy to see, then, why Billy will, in the great comedic tradition,
do anything to get off the island.
His chance comes in the form of real-life docudramatist Robert
Flaherty (though the playbill includes a full three pages on the
"Nanook of the North" director, Flaherty never takes the stage and
only touches the town tangentially). Hearing that the filmmaker is
in search of Irish starlets, Billy tells boat owner Babbybobby
(Paul O’Brien) that he has only three months to live and begs a
pity-induced ride to the nearby island Inishmore, where the cameras
are rolling.
In other words, Billy is not above a little manipulation.
McDonagh has placed a multifaceted if unlikely leading man at the
center of his play. Fred Koehler fills out the role with his
incredulous crumpled face and intelligent if impatient queries.
Thankfully, Billy is neither Tiny Tim sweet, nor the archetypal
tortured genius trapped in his surroundings. As much as he’d like
to think otherwise, Billy fits right in with his worry-wart aunts,
town gossip Johnnypateenmike (Max Wright), doltish Bartley (J.D.
Cullum) and Bartley’s wild, egg-throwing sister Helen (Derdriu
Ring), whom he also happens to be in love with.
The residents of Inishmaan spend the first act bickering and
speculating  the plot seems to be primarily an excuse for
them to sling witty barbs at each other. And the barbs live up.
Helen earnestly and honestly explains Billy’s failure as a ladies’
man to him: "Would you love you if you weren’t you? You barely love
you and you are you."
A few running gags become inside jokes, letting the audience
share the small town sensibility. There’s the increasingly
mysterious story of a slain goose and cat, for instance, and the
boastful theory that everyone wants to come to Ireland, so it must
be a pretty great place (the English, the "colored people," the
sharks, eventually that German guy with the funny mustache). The
latter also underscores the town’s desperate longing for approval
from the world that is so alien to them.
Nevertheless, such banter wears a little thin at the beginning
of the second act, which initially seems to dredge up the punch
lines of the first. It appears things are officially headed
downhill when Billy, from a meager hotel room in the States,
delivers the world’s schmalziest monologue  praying to his
dead mother and hoping that his spirit will prevail even as
tuberculosis wracks his body.
But before sighs of disappointment can drown Billy’s hacking
cough (the tuberculosis issue is a ping pong game of
does-he-or-doesn’t-he), McDonagh delivers a clever punch of "don’t
underestimate me."
The play constantly plays with our understanding of comedic
formulas. When Billy at one point predicts the compassionate
Babbybobby’s forgiveness, Babbybobby proceeds to beat his crippled
friend with a lead stick. By its close, the play has taken (almost)
more twists than the bizarre but under-appreciated movie "Wild
Things."
And the capable cast keeps up every step of the way. The
relationship between Wright’s Johnnypateenmike, who sputters and
pries and reveals admirable power to annoy, and his 90-year-old
drunken Mammy is reason enough to buy a rush ticket.
Rosaleen Linehan’s red-eyed, whisky shooting, sharp-tongued
Mammy loudly informs her son, "You’re the most boring old fecker in
Ireland and there’s plenty of competition for that post." Making
such situations doubly funny is the fact that Johnnypateenmike has
no qualms about calling his mother a "shite gobbed fecking bitch
fecker" (a foul mouthed bitch, according to the playbill’s handy
glossary of Irish profanity) to her face.
There’s a lot of hatred in such humor, just like there’s a lot
of affection underlying some of the play’s seemingly crueler
moments. McDonagh, who went on to win a Tony for his 1998 play "The
Beauty Queen of Leenane," is clearly in tune with his subjects and
gives his cripples wings. Even if they merely fly in circles around
a chilly little island.
THEATER: "The Cripple of Inishmaan" runs through Nov. 22 at the
Geffen Playhouse. Tickets are $30-$40. Student rush is $10. For
ticket information, call (310) 208-5454.
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