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The good, the bad, and the ugly: violence, tradition and the politics of
morality in Martin McDonagh's 'The Lieutenant of Inishmore'
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 Catherine Rees

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly:

the Politics of Morality in Martin
McDonagh’s The Lieutenant of Inishmore
The recent plays of Martin McDonagh have fascinated and repelled critics for nearly a
decade. His idiosyncratic blend of rural Irish mythology and ‘in-yer-face’ aggression has
both caused consternation and won high praise, but the motivations and inspirations of
McDonagh’s work have not been widely discussed. Here, Catherine Rees addresses some
of the common critical assaults on one of his most contentious plays, The Lieutenant of
Inishmore (2001), and seeks to rescue the playwright from misunderstanding and heavy-
handed critical treatment. She also aims to clarify some of the issues surrounding this
politically charged and controversial work, and discusses it within the wider context of
British and Irish drama. An earlier version of this article was given as a paper at the
‘Contemporary Irish Literature: Diverse Voices’ conference at the University of Central
Lancaster in April 2003. Rees has presented on various aspects of McDonagh’s work at
a joint American Conference for Irish Studies and British Association of Irish Studies
conference, and is currently working on a PhD about his plays at the University of Wales,
Aberystwyth.

IRISH DRAMA is, it would appear, unable to ‘all psychopathic morons’ and so ‘make . . .
escape from the politics either of its writing any serious debate impossible’. Her argument
or its subject. Martin McDonagh, a play- is that The Lieutenant fails in that it provides
wright who has set all but one of his plays in no overt political commentary. She finds the
the rural landscape of the west of Ireland, lack of seriousness in the characters to be an
has been attacked and praised in equal indication of a lack of clear political angle,
measure for both responding to and refusing challenging the absence of ‘a single intel-
to be restrained by the accepted trajectory ligent Irish character in any of McDonagh’s
of Irish theatre. Born in London of Irish plays’ as proof of ‘a set of characters who
parentage, McDonagh is in the perfect merge into a single cod stereotype of
position to interrogate the mythology of Irish “Oirishness”.’2
drama, while simultaneously able to claim Luckhurst and other critics clearly feel let
this heritage as his own. As Graham Why- down by The Lieutenant of Inishmore. Because
brow, literary manager at the Royal Court, McDonagh has written a violent play about
puts it, ‘McDonagh writes both within a the violence of terrorism within the INLA, he
tradition and against a mythology’.1 is seen as not being responsible enough to
Critics have attacked McDonagh’s theat- provide his audiences with adequate moral
rical technique, and especially his recent co-ordinates to negotiate and respond to his
Olivier Award-winning play, The Lieutenant play. The concern is that English audiences
of Inishmore (2001), arguing that he provides are merely laughing at the farcical elements
English audiences with stereotypical images and forgetting to think about the political
of the Irish, existing purely to be laughed at. message that Irish playwrights are tradi-
It is this claim which I will be contesting here. tionally supposed to deliver.
Mary Luckhurst, who challenged the play in The weakness of this argument is the
a now published paper, first given at a con- mistake of aligning Irish drama with poli-
ference in 2002, finds that its characters are tical drama per se. As Nicholas Grene points

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 out, ‘As long as there has been a distinct Irish so unnerves critics. The sinister torture scene
drama it has been so closely bound up with is cut short by a telephone call from Padraic’s
national politics that the one has often been father and includes moments of black
considered more or less a reflection of the comedy such as ‘I’m torturing one of them
other’.3 While McDonagh’s play is, I would fellas pushes drugs on wee kids, but I can’t
argue, a clear and absolute political satire, say too much over the phone, like . . .’, and
there is no reason why Luckhurst should Padraic politely apologizing to his victim for
seek a defining politics in his play. The mere the delay: ‘I’ll be with you in a minute now,
fact of his writing an Irish drama on an Irish James.’ The on-going joke in the play is
subject does not dictate a resolute didactic established as it emerges that Padraic cares
purpose, and to wish for such a moral more for his sick cat than for the human
outlook in the work of a playwright such as victims of his crimes, finally allowing James
McDonagh is, arguably, to miss the point of to go after he feigns a love of cats himself and
his drama. Padraic ‘gives the confused James some
The political impetus behind the writing change’ for the bus to the hospital, ‘because
of The Lieutenant of Inishmore, as claimed by you want to get them toes looked at. The last
McDonagh himself, is, however, clear. What thing you want now is septic toes.’ 6
‘spurred him to write [the play] was the IRA The brutality in the play certainly re-
atrocity in Warrington, in which two boys sembles that of farce. The bodies which pile
were killed’, writes theatre critic Charles up by its end recall the carnage of Alfred
Spencer in the Daily Telegraph (28 June 2002), Jarry’s infamous Père Ubu, ‘in which crowds
quoting McDonagh as saying: ‘I thought, of victims are gleefully tortured and mur-
hang on, this is being done in my name and dered before our eyes’.7 But, like Jarry’s play,
I just feel like exploding in rage.’ Indeed, which sought to challenge the accepted con-
McDonagh seems to answer Luckhurst’s ventions of the French theatre, McDonagh
criticism directly when he remarks: ‘The vio- uses cruelty not to titillate middle-class audi-
lence has a purpose . . . otherwise there’s ences and create an enfant terrible reputation,
nothing particularly interesting about shoot- but to expose the cruelty and pointlessness
ing people on stage. If people who’ve had of the terrorism he is criticizing. As Charles
violence inflicted on them on either side of Spencer puts it, ‘The more gory and out-
the Troubles see this play, I hope they’ll see it rageous the action becomes . . . the more
as anti-violence.’ 4 forcefully he makes his point about mindless
barbarity.’ 8 And McDonagh himself tells us:
Comedy and Cruelty I walk that line between comedy and cruelty . . .
The violence in The Lieutenant of Inishmore is because I think one illuminates the other. And,
yeah, I tend to push things as far as I can because
one of the aspects of the play that critics I think you can see things more clearly through
object to. Luckhurst speaks of ‘an orgy of exaggeration than through reality. . . . There is a
random violence’ and of ‘a rather obvious humour in there that is straight-ahead funny and
attempt to outdo her [Sarah Kane’s Blasted] uncomfortable. It makes you laugh and think.9
for blood and guts’. It is undeniably a violent
and horrific play, whose plot involves a
Deflating Mythology
Reservoir Dogs-style torture scene in which a
drug dealer is hung upside down on stage at David Ian Rabey argues (paraphrasing Marx)
the mercy of ‘Mad Padraic’, a terrorist that ‘by intensifying a situation it becomes a
refused membership to the IRA because he revolutionary one’.10 Arguably, when Luck-
was ‘too mad’.5 hurst finds the characters of McDonagh’s
What makes the violence harder to plays one-dimensional and stereotypical, she
stomach is the comedy which accompanies is reacting against McDonagh’s use of cari-
it, and it is this irreverence to the violence of cature to deflate the Irish mythology of pre-
the Northern Irish political situation which vious drama and to make a very specific

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 point about the sentimentality of both Irish to terror is either to ignore it or to laugh at it’.15
rural drama and of the approaches to radical We cannot ignore the terror in McDonagh’s
terrorism. play because we are laughing at it, but on a
W. A. Armstrong writes of J. M. Synge’s deeper level the audience is also implicated
The Playboy of the Western World, a play that is in the violence because we are vicariously
often seen as having influenced McDonagh’s enjoying it. This is exactly the uncomfortable
Lonesome West and A Skull in Connemara, position McDonagh wishes to put us in.
‘Synge had a great affection for the peasant
communities that he knew, but in his plays
Squeam Tactics
he satirizes their credulity, violence, and paro-
chialism.’ 11 This is, I’d suggest, exactly what When Luckhurst argues that McDonagh is
McDonagh is doing – writing within this pandering to his English audiences, she
classical Irish tradition of the idyllic, pastoral seems to overlook the complex trap he is
countryside, while savagely attacking the setting for them. Mark Lawson argues that
sentimentality of the terrorist movement as a McDonagh intends to confound audiences’
noble response to ‘the love of one’s land’ by expectations by ‘mak[ing] us worry more
employing the overt and dramatic tactics of about the cats than the humans involved’,
the London playwrights of the late 1990s, the while Susannah Clapp says that McDonagh
so-called ‘in yer face’ British drama.12 It is ‘uses the squeamishness of his audience –
this combination of dramatic styles which who are more accustomed to seeing a stage
makes The Lieutenant so hard for critics. littered with human corpses than witnessing
Aleks Sierz characterizes this trend in the death of one pet puss – to highlight the
British drama by stressing ‘its intensity, its sentimentality which often accompanies
deliberate relentlessness, and its ruthless thuggishness’.16
commitment to extremes’. He also argues for By increasing our attachment to the cats of
the need for violence and provocative images the play, McDonagh is cleverly trapping the
on stage as they undermine traditional stage very audience that Luckhurst argues he is
constraints, ‘affronting the ruling ideas of courting into an alignment with Padraic. In
what can or should be shown on stage [and] doing so, McDonagh is subverting the theat-
also tap[ping] into more primitive feelings, rical convention – notably that of the Jacobean
smashing taboos, mentioning the forbidden, revenge tragedy, which accepts the loss of
creating discomfort’.13 A good example of a human life as part of the theatrical occasion –
play that employed some of these techniques and is instead focusing our attention on the
in an earlier era is Edward Bond’s contro- absurd sentimentality which worries and
versial Saved (1965), in which a baby is fusses over the death of a terrorist’s cat. The
stoned to death in its pram. Sarah Kane, a irony of animal rights campaigners protest-
leading figure of ‘In-yer-face’ drama, was ing at the use of live cats in a Dutch per-
influenced by it, remarking, ‘When I read formance of the play would surely not be lost
Saved, I was shocked by the baby being on McDonagh.17
stoned. But then I thought, there isn’t any- In exposing the inconsistencies in both the
thing you can’t represent on stage.’ 14 audience and in the creation of Padraic’s
This attitude leads to a refusal to ignore character, McDonagh is not only ‘razor sharp
the sometimes sordid and violent aspects of on the terrorists who quite happily torture
life, and a determination to represent them in and murder human beings, but are des-
the theatre. The justification for the explicit perately concerned about the welfare of cats’,
violence in these plays is that in the ‘jagged but he is also mounting a scathing attack on
and violent decade’ of the ’nineties, plays ‘a band of men . . . whose murderous acti-
sometimes need shocking images which are vities are motivated by adolescent absolutes
‘impossible to ignore’. Similarly, comedy is a and maudlin sentimentality’.18
valid device for tapping into the audience’s When Luckhurst states that she finds ‘poli-
psyche: Sierz argues that ‘a common reaction tical substance all but air-brushed away’19 in

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 The Lieutenant of Inishmore, she is clearly the terrorists’ fight. By setting the plays in
overlooking the subtle inversion of political southern rather than northern Ireland, he
idealism and Irish political history. Not only instantly retracts the immediacy of the situ-
is McDonagh confronting the audience with ation and exposes the farce of extreme ter-
a sentimentality which forces them to ques- rorist violence in a ‘cottage on Inishmore’ in
tion their own moral system, he is simul- which there is a ‘framed piece of embroidery
taneously challenging them to condemn the reading “Home Sweet Home”’ (p. 3) – an
utopian ideals that are becoming meaning- environment which says very little to the
less and forgotten. audience in terms of justifying terrorism.
Likewise, McDonagh takes care to under-
mine the utopian ideals of his characters by
Against Political Sentimentality
showing them as lacking in vital respects.
The Irish history presented in the play is Padraic’s advice to Mairead, to ‘be staying at
based on particularly shaky knowledge, not home, now, and marry some nice fella. Let
due to McDonagh’s personal dismissal of its your hair grow out a tadeen and some fella’s
significance but because the characters are bound to be looking twice at you some day,
operating in a world which no longer under- and if you learn to cook and sew too, sure,
stands it. For instance, the INLA understand that’d double your chances. Maybe treble’
they should be antagonistic towards Oliver (p. 36), along with his insistence that ‘We
Cromwell, but can no longer remember why. don’t be letting girls in the INLA. No. Unless
Christy’s remark, ‘Do you know how many pretty girls’ (p. 35), demonstrates that his
cats Oliver Cromwell killed in his time?’ ideals are based on a foundation which is
(p. 30), exposes the absurd reduction of Irish hypocritical and opportunistic.
history into the image of a mallreated cat, thus The direct link McDonagh makes between
condemning the terrorist movement which the drugs trade and the funding of terrorism
still fights in its name. Mairead’s choice of again undermines Padraic’s ideal. Christy
name for her own cat, Sir Roger Casement, points out to Padraic that the drug dealers he
similarly reduces Irish history to the laugh- is so fond of torturing, because they sell to
ably absurd. More recent history does not Catholics as well as Protestants, are ‘fella[s]
escape McDonagh’s scorn, either, when Joey without whom there’d be no financing for
tries to liken the battering of a cat to the your ferry crossings and chip-shop man-
Bloody Sunday massacre (p. 28). oeuvres’ (p. 45). The constant reference in the
McDonagh’s criticism of the misuse of play to ‘freeing Ireland’ is shown to be, in the
Irish political history doesn’t end with The hands of terrorists, a worthless ideal. Brian
Lieutenant of Inishmore. Ray Dooley in The Logan writes, ‘There’s no room for ambi-
Beauty Queen of Leenane equates his drunken guity . . . no one could think of these terrorists
escapade of kicking a cell door in just his as freedom fighters. They’re sexist, emotion-
socks with the injustice of the Birmingham ally stunted, and concerned with the implic-
Six case. Similarly, Padraic completely misses ations for tourism. . . . McDonagh’s scorn of
the point when he remarks, ‘Ah feck the pig-headed Utopianism and false history has
Guildford Four. Even if they didn’t do it, a wide application.’ 21 In this context, the use
they should’ve taken the blame and been of stock characters, whom Luckhurst con-
proud.’ When Mick Dowd in A Skull in Con- demns as ‘[not] worth keeping alive anyway’,
nemara remarks, ‘That’s the trouble with become political tools, larger-than-life car-
young people today, they don’t know the toons who have lost any sense of what they
first thing about Irish history’, McDonagh is are fighting for. 22
clearly challenging the validity of this past as
a basis for terrorism.20
Challenging the Idyllic
In challenging the sentimentality and also
absurdity of the Irish terrorist movement, McDonagh’s view of Ireland, like his presen-
McDonagh also exposes the pointlessness of tation of history and character, is not accid-

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 ental. Nicholas Grene traces the presentation does not want us to find them intelligent and
of pastoral Ireland, citing the film The Quiet eloquent spokespeople for a political cause,
Man as an archetypal ‘classic use of Ireland’, such as John Osborne’s Jimmy Porter in Look
employing the ‘idyllic landscape’ and creat- Back in Anger (1956) or David Hare’s Susan
ing an Ireland which is ‘archaic [and] tradi- Traherne in Plenty (1978); rather he would
tional’.23 McDonagh takes this rural myth prefer we saw them as the gang from
and challenges it, deliberately using The Quiet Edward Bond’s Saved, brutal and thuggish
Man to destroy the mythology it creates. without offering any justification for or com-
In A Skull in Connemara, Mick berates prehension of their actions.
Mary for pandering to the tourist ‘Yanks’, The characters in Lieutenant cannot be
‘telling them your Liam’s place was where judged within a naturalistic, believable, and
The Quiet Man was filmed, when wasn’t it a realistic context. As Sierz remarks, ‘The prob-
hundred miles away?’ (p. 67). Tourism is an lem with judging ’nineties new writing in
issue McDonagh chooses to confront, acknow- terms of naturalism or social realism is that
ledging Ireland’s need for it but laughing at this tries to impose the conventions of a
‘them eejit Yanks’ (p. 67) at the same time. previous era onto the present.’ Sierz also
During the violence at the ending of The argues that: ‘Of course, “in-yer-face” drama
Lieutenant of Inishmore, Donny dryly remarks, is not strong on either plot or character-
‘It’s incidents like this does put tourists off ization – but its power lies in the directness
Ireland’ (p. 50). of its shock tactics, the immediacy of its lan-
The play thus articulates the widening guage, the relevance of its themes, and the
and hybridizing of Ireland into the ‘global stark aptness of its stage pictures.’27 Failure
village’, and is punctuated by references to to appreciate this often lies at the heart of
media influence.24 The characters understand criticism of McDonagh and can be expressed
and articulate their experiences through tele- as the dichotomy laid out at the beginning of
vision programmes, for instance, the local this paper: the use of ’nineties shock tactics
policeman glamorizing his job as ‘just like on the one hand, and the exploration and
Hill Street Blues’, while Catholic doctrine is interrogation of traditional political drama
reduced to, ‘So that fella from Alias Smith and and Irish dramatic tradition on the other.
Jones, he’d be in hell?’, and Padraic’s view of
women is limited to idealizing ‘Evie off The
Conclusion
House of Elliott’.25
Critics of McDonagh would have it that I would argue that it is impossible to appre-
the idiocies of the characters in The Lieutenant ciate The Lieutenant of Inishmore without an
make ‘serious debate impossible’26. In the light understanding of its context. The violence
of the above discussion, perhaps one could and shock-potential of this play not only
further respond by pointing out that this is align it with a ’nineties trend which is seek-
McDonagh’s point. His characters are delib- ing to test the limits of theatricality and to
erately extreme and consciously controver- push the boundaries of what can be shown
sial. The very real brutality of the play not on stage, it is also reminiscent of Jacobean
only locates it in the tradition of ‘in-yer-face’ tragedies, ending as they do in bloodshed
drama, it deliberately forces the audience not and the piling up of corpses on stage.
to laugh at the stupidities of the Irish but to The Lieutenant of Inishmore recalls this
confront their own approaches to the senti- classic technique, with its ‘blood-soaked living
mentality of the Irish political movement room . . . strewn with . . . body parts’ (p. 55), but
and to interrogate the causes of Padraic’s it also sits well in the tradition of farce and
dislocation and isolation in a world which no surrealism. The politics of the play are made
longer remembers the history it is fighting clear in the absurdity of the ending, when the
for. real ‘Wee Thomas’ nonchalantly wanders
To question the intelligence of McDonagh’s across the stage, unaware of the carnage
characters is also to overlook the fact that he which has taken place in his name. When

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 Davey remarks, ‘So all this terror has been 8. Charles Spencer, ‘Devastating Masterpiece of Black
Comedy’, Daily Telegraph, 28 June 2002.
for absolutely nothing?’ (p. 68), we would be 9. Sean O’Hagan, ‘The Wild West’, The Guardian, 24
foolish to ignore the political seriousness in March 2001.
this line, as we would be to overlook the 10. David Ian Rabey, British and Irish Political Drama
in the Twentieth Century (Houndmills: Macmillan, 1986),
warmth of the ending in which neither Davey p. 4.
nor Donny can bring themselves to shoot the 11. W. A. Armstrong, ‘The Irish Dramatic Move-
cat, instead feeding it, in an image not unlike ment’, Classic Irish Drama (Harmondsworth: Penguin,
1964), p. 10.
Len’s mending of the chair at the close of 12. Aleks Sierz, In-Yer-Face Theatre: British Drama
Saved: a clear suggestion of hope among Today (London: Faber and Faber, 2001). This has a section
futility. If audiences choose to ignore this on McDongah’s Leenane trilogy, p. 219–25.
13. Ibid., p. xiii, 4.
message, and the constant ridiculing of the 14. Quoted in Clare Bayley, ‘A Very Angry Young
political extremists which runs throughout Woman’, The Independent, 23 January 1995. See also
the play, it is because of an inability to see Edward Bond, Saved, in Plays One (London: Methuen,
1977).
past the physical staging and the black 15. Sierz, op. cit., p. 206, 8, 6.
humour, which not only give the play its 16. Mark Lawson, ‘Sick-Buckets Needed in the
form, but also contribute to its message. Stalls’, The Guardian, 28 April 2001; Susannah Clapp,
‘Please Sir, I Want Some Gore’, The Observer, 20 June
2001.
17. ‘Animal Rights Campaigners Protest at Use of
Notes and References Live Cats in Play’, Ananova, 4 October 2002.
1. Graham Whybrow, ‘Introduction’, The Methuen 18. Lyn Gardner, review of The Lieutenant of
Book of Modern Drama (London: Methuen, 2001), p. x. Inishmore, The Guardian, 29 June 2002; Brian Logan, ‘The
2. Mary Luckhurst, ‘Martin McDonagh’s Lieutenant Lieutenant of Inishmore at The Other Place, Stratford’, The
of Inishmore: Selling (-Out) to the English', Contemporary Independent, 21 May 2001.
Theatre Review, XIV, No. 4 (November 2004), p. 34–41. 19. Ibid., p. 6.
3. Nicholas Grene, The Politics of Irish Drama: Plays in 20. Martin McDonagh, The Beauty Queen of Leenane
Context from Boucicault to Friel (Cambridge: Cambridge in Plays One (London: Methuen, 1999), p. 33, and A Skull
University Press, 1999), p. 1. in Connemara, ibid., p. 87.
4. Daniel Rosenthal, ‘How to Slay ’Em in the Isles’, 21. Ibid.
The Independent, 11 April 2001; Charles Spencer, ‘Devas- 22. Ibid., p. 5.
tating Masterpiece of Black Comedy’, Daily Telegraph, 28 23. Ibid., p. 211.
June 2002. 24. Sierz, op. cit., p. 221.
5. Ibid., p. 3, 7. 25. McDonagh, Plays One, p. 89, 154; and Lieutenant,
6. Martin McDonagh, The Lieutenant of Inishmore p. 58.
(London: Methuen, 2001), p. 13–14, 16. All other refer- 26. Luckhurst, op. cit., p. 3–4, 7.
ences are to this edition. 27. Aleks Sierz, op. cit., p. 243; and ‘Cool Britannia?
7. Maya Slater, ‘Introduction’, Three Pre-Surrealist “In-Yer-Face” Writing in the British Theatre Today’, New
Plays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. xii. Theatre Quarterly, No. 56, (November 1998), p. 333.

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