Lonesome and drunk

And generic in a good way

By Gibson Fay-LeBlanc

Generic Theater’s The Lonesome West plays at McDonough Street Studio in Portsmouth, NH through June 17. Call 603-778-7115 for tickets and information.

AN IRISHMAN’S STASH: prized religious icons.

If there’s one word to describe the Generic Theater’s production of Anglo-Irish playwright Martin McDonagh’s The Lonesome West, it’s unique. For one thing, to see GT’s production, you have to wind through the downtown streets of Portsmouth, NH to find . . . Safeway Storage. On the third floor is the McDonough Street Studio (also home to Pontine Movement Theatre), which GT is using for The Lonesome West. With no AC and little ventilation, the tiny theater space was sweltering on Saturday night, which, though uncomfortable, was a fitting complement to the setting.

Another reason to use the word unique is the playwright. At 27, Martin McDonagh, a high school drop-out from working-class South London who had only seen a few plays during his life, awed audiences in London and New York with The Beauty Queen of Leenane. Three years and four Tony awards later, McDonagh’s dark comedy, sharp working-class Irish dialogue, and casual violence have done for him what Reservoir Dogs did for his self-proclaimed idol, Quentin Tarantino.

The Lonesome West and The Beauty Queen of Leenane are parts two and three of McDonagh’s Connemara Cycle, the first of which, A Skull in Connemara, was produced in the McDonough Street theatre space last fall. It is a series which tells the twisted stories of three different families from a fictionalized western Ireland. West focuses on the Connor brothers, two blokes from a small town who do little but bicker with each other to the amusement of a local lass named Girleen and the consternation of a young, alcoholic priest, Father Welsh.

The play opens with Coleman and Valene Connor returning home with Fr. Welsh to their shabby cottage after burying their father. The dark tone is set as Valene peppers his brother with questions about dipping into his stash of alcohol, and neither of them seems the least bit sorry or sad that their father is dead and that Coleman “accidentally” shot him in the head. McDonagh’s dialogue is chock-full of lilting Irish phrases like “a wee bit,” names like Blind Billy Bender, and enough fucks (pronounced “feck” in the brogue) to be compared to Tarantino.

McDonagh’s script shows itself to be more than just proper use of dialect, though. This is no ordinary working-class town. Father Welsh-Walsh-Welsh (no one remembers which) coaches a girls’ football team (soccer to us Yanks) that sets records for red cards and opponents’ injuries each game. He hopelessly oversees a parish in which no one seems to care about two recent murders and a suicide. The sassy Girleen walks around peddling booze for her father, flirting with older men, and ignoring Welsh’s admonitions.

The Connor brothers are particularly disturbing to the priest. Valene mawkishly guards his stuff, which includes a collection of religious figurines that he marks in indelible ink with a large “V.” Coleman talks about “darkies” and “packie men whistling at snakes” and calls his brother a “virgin feckin’ gay boy!” Valene sums up the two brothers’ attitude when he says, “Nobody’ll notice a biteen more hate, so, if there’s plenty enough hate in the world.”

Rather than change the brothers’ hateful attitude toward each other and the world in general, Father Welsh’s unheeded reprimands only lead the man of the cloth further into doubts and drink. At one point Girleen asks, “He’s not having another crisis of faith, is he? That’s the twelfth this week.” Beneath comedic lines like these is a dark subtext that explodes when Welsh begins to fray around the edges. The audience sees that sausage rolls, stiff drinks, and chastising each other are about the only things worth smiling about in the squalor and rancor the brothers have lived in all their lives, so they hold on to them, despite protestations.

Alan Huisman and Bruce Allen as Coleman and Valene, respectively, capture the brothers’ manic attacking of each other in a way that is completely unsentimental yet provides glimpses of their care for each other. Kate Kosteva portrays Girleen as an Irish girl who, in a scene with Father Welsh on a jetty, proves much more complex than she initially presents herself. Discussing a suicide, she says, “At least when you’re still here, you still have a chance to be happy.”

What is most unique about McDonagh’s script and GT’s production of Lonesome West is that there is never a real “A-ha!” moment for the brothers. We root for them to change themselves and their surroundings. There is development in these two characters, but not of the Hollywood, snap-your fingers-and-play-the-main-song-on-the-soundtrack variety.

Coleman and Valene do try to mend their relationship, in part by running through a list of things to apologize for doing over the years. This provides a chance for both humor and sadness, as the two make saying sorry into yet another of the games that fill their everyday lives.

The closest Coleman gets to remorse is when he notes, “I do like a good fight. It does show you care.” That’s also the closest McDonagh gets to telling us what this slice of Irish life is all about. If these two brothers can not kill each other after all they’ve been through, it’s a testament to something.

Gibson Fay-LeBlanc can be reached at riverbetweenus@hotmail.com.