plenty of feckin' meat on these bones

Skull has meat on its bones

Plot has delirious twists and gloriously absurd dialogue

The Province
E-Today

Tuesday, June 14, 2005

By Jerry Wasserman

ON STAGE

A Skull in Connemara

Where: Waterfront Theatre, Granville Island
When: Tues.-Sat., until June 18
Tickets: $16-$22/Tuesday 2-for-1 at 604-257-0366 or www.festivalboxoffice.com
Grade: A-

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Martin McDonagh won't likely win any awards from chambers of commerce or bureaus of tourism in the remote northwest of Ireland where he sets his bleak, violent comedies of contemporary Irish life. But the plays themselves, including The Cripple of Inishmaan and The Beauty Queen of Leenane, have garnered multiple prizes and made McDonagh, a Londoner born to Irish parents, hugely successful.

Often compared to Irish master playwright John Synge for his plays' ironies, settings and rich dialect, McDonagh cites as his actual models David Mamet and Quentin Tarantino. A Skull in Connemara shows the influence of all three, capturing small-time Irish men and women through the prism of booze and blarney, petty ambition, casual violence and hilariously absurd dialogue.

Richard Wolfe's Western Theatre Conspiracy production brings McDonagh's world vividly alive in all its dark comic grotesquery.

Rural Connemara is nowheresville, a place so backward that once every year Mick Dowd (William Samples) digs up the bones of the dead from the local churchyard to make room for new corpses. This year's bones include those of his own wife, killed seven years earlier in an accident caused by his "drink driving."

Mostly, Mick sits in his shack drinking poteen and gossiping with neighbour Maryjohnny (Wendy Morrow Donaldson), a bingo addict who sells "idjit Yanks" phony memorabilia from a locally shot John Wayne movie. Mick's assistant at the graveyard is Maryjohnny's feckless, angry, none too bright teenage grandson Mairtin (Johann Helf), whose claim to fame is once having cooked a live hamster. They're joined by Mairtin's bullying older brother (Adam Henderson), a constable who aspires to solve major crimes like his TV idol, Quincy.

Mysteries abound, including rumours that Mick's wife's death might have been murder. But where is her body? And whatever happens to those bones after he digs them up?

The plot takes some delirious twists and turns but the main pleasures of this piece are its gloriously absurd language and texture. The churchyard scene evokes Shakespeare's gravediggers unearthing Yorick's skull. But instead of Hamlet's philosophizing, McDonagh has Mairtin thoughtfully observing, "You can stick yer fingers right in their eyes," and wondering, "Where does yer t'ing go when you die?"

Later, we watch Mick demonstrate how to avoid drowning in your own vomit when you go to bed drunk, and hear an argument about whether you can write out a murder confession with a fluorescent bingo pen.

The acting is terrific, especially by the three men who deliver all the comic colours of the richly vulgar colloquial speech with its "feckin'" this and "feckin'" that. Kudos to David Roberts' moody set with its working graveyard and to stage manager Anne Taylor who has to rebury the dead after every show and clean up the shards of skulls smashed to smithereens in the drunken orgy of violence that pretty much sums up a typical Saturday night in Connemara.

Read more of Jerry Wasserman's reviews at www.vancouverplays.com

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Digging up black humour in a graveyard

Vancouver Sun

Thursday, June 9, 2005

Section: Queue

By Peter Birnie

A SKULL IN CONNEMARA

At the Waterfront Theatre on Granville Island, to June 18

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Martin McDonagh has one hell of a way with words. The smartest thing a director can do with the works of this hotshot Irish (well, born to Irish expats in London) playwright is to stand back and let the fur fly.

Richard Wolfe gets it just about right in directing a Western Theatre Conspiracy production of McDonagh's A Skull in Connemara. Slapped together in 1997 as the centrepiece of a trilogy that includes the equally rude The Beauty Queen of Leenane and The Lonesome West, A Skull of Connemara is typical of McDonagh's gift for wing-and-a-prayer plays that sing in a very strange way. It's fast, funny and filled with the playwright's trademark ability to make us squirm, and this production makes the most of its rich script.

William Samples delivers a simply astonishing performance as Mick Dowd, a widower who lives in a humble Connemara cottage and hires himself out each autumn as a gravedigger. David Roberts designs a set that has Dowd's home on one side of the stage and a patch of consecrated graveyard on the other, and Samples inhabits both with ease.

Dowd doesn't dig holes to bury people but to disinter the bones of those who've gone before, for there's only so much room in Connemara's cemetery. He's assisted in this gruesome task by young Mairtin, played with gleeful stupidity by Johann Helf, and interrupted by Mairtin's brother Thomas (Adam Henderson, equally sharp). Tom is a cop obsessed with the fact that Mick killed his late wife in what was labelled drunk-driving. Or was it? One of the joys of A Skull in Connemara is McDonagh's attention to his plot. While a blur of words offers constant comedic evidence of the weird and wonderful way his characters always speak, he's also playing plot twists toward a truly dramatic punchline. In short, a theatrical experience both real and surreal.

Although Wendy Morrow Donaldson looks the part of the Irish woman who pesters Mick each night for a glass of his moonshine, she's also the only one who fails to deliver an authentic accent. Given the strengths of all the other elements in this show, this glitch isn't too disruptive.

AT A GLANCE

Big Picture: Graveyard humour highlights a dark comedy
For the Connoisseur: Anglo-Irish playwright Martin McDonagh has a rich gift of blarney
Best Moment: A second-act return from the dead
Worst Moment: Watch for flying fragments of skull in the first few rows
Running Time: Two hours, including a 15-minute intermission
Tickets: $22/16, call 604-257-0366 or visit http://www.festivalboxoffice.com/

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Dark humour and strong performances elevate Skull

Western Theatre Conspiracy stages fine production of Brit hit

The Westender (Vancouver)

Metrovalley Newspaper Group

Thursday, June 9, 2005

The Lonely Planet online travel guide describes Connemara as "the wild and barren region northwest of Galway City." While the Irish village where A Skull in Connemara takes place isn't specified, we know it's a fairly small place because everyone knows everyone else's business, and, of the play's four characters, three are related.

Bill Samples plays Mick Dowd, and he is sitting in his cottage reading the paper even as the audience files into the Waterfront Theatre. A knock at the door heralds the entrance of Maryjohnny Rafferty (Wendy Morrow Donaldson), an old biddy on her way home from "the bingo" who shares Mick's keen taste for the homemade potato shine they call "poteen." As they power their way through the bottle, Maryjohnny mentions that it will soon be time for Mick's annual job of clearing out bodies in the cemetery that are beyond seven years dead, making way for new corpses. Their drinking session is interrupted by Mairtin (Johann Helf), who has a message from the priest: the grave-clearing is to be in the section where Mick's wife Oona is buried.

Now might be the time to mention that this is a comedy.

Martin McDonagh has a hot hand, with the distinction of being the only playwright, aside from Shakespeare, to have four plays on London stages at the same time. The writing is full of "Irish-isms" (a handy reference is included in the program), and most of the laughs are at the expense of Mairtin, who is in no danger of being recruited by Mensa at any time in the near future. At one point, he's angry with Mick for calling him names, but can't remember what exactly they were without the prompting of Maryjohnny, who is also his grandma. Helf did a good job as a dimbulb in the recent Criminal Genius at Havana, but he should, perhaps, reconsider if the next role he's offered is another brainless goof; not because he isn't good at them - quite the opposite - but we'd like to see what else he can do.

The exhumation of Mick's Oona has to be done under police supervision, as she died in a car accident in which Mick was at the wheel. The townsfolk are suspicious that the crash was a cover-up, and Mick's authoritarian babysitter is Thomas Hanlon (Adam Henderson), who is also Mairtin's brother. Thomas is only a tad more intelligent than his sibling, and is puffed up with his own uniformed importance - it's a deadly combination. Henderson does good work in the graveyard scene that ends the first act, but is less compelling in his return near the play's end.

It is the performance of Bill Samples as Mick that propels A Skull in Connemara above the label of mere light entertainment. His is a performance that shows off the skills of a veteran. He convincingly depicts a man who has endured heartbreak, yet who exhibits enough of a temper to make us wonder if the wagging tongues of the gossips might taste a grain of truth.

The set, by David Roberts, has Mick's stone house in one corner and the boneyard in the other, but each of these pieces are quite large and, because they are placed at an angle, they cover centre stage, denying the actors access to their strongest playing area. Alan Brodie's lighting is problematic, notably in the grave-digging scene, where lights cutting across the stage produce distracting shadows on the side wall.

Director Richard Wolfe keeps the pace up nicely throughout, and the two-plus hours zip right along. A Skull in Connemara is painted in the darkest shades of humour, but in the hands of the Western Theatre Conspiracy, it's surprisingly funny.

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