The Lonesome West

By Diana Simmonds

August 24 2009

THE LONESOME WEST Downstairs Belvoir St; Arts Asia Pacific in association with B Sharp; 22 August-13 September 2009; 9699 3444 or www.belvoir.com.au. Production images by Heidrun Lohr.

The Lonesome West (1997) is the third play in Martin McDonagh’s Leenane Trilogy (first two: The Beauty Queen of Leenane and A Skull in Connemara). It’s a trilogy in that the play’s share a setting – a particularly bleak if weirdly beautiful dot on the map of western Ireland, as well as the overwhelming presence of rain; but the characters of the various families do not overlap.

McDonagh was born in south London to Irish parents and he spent his childhood summer holidays in the west of Ireland. The crazily poetic language and preoccupations of the inhabitants and their harsh way of life seeped deep into his consciousness to emerge in these plays: at once darkly hilarious, breathtakingly cruel and deeply touching. He is simultaneously an insider and outsider, with the reluctantly loving heart of the former and the objective eye and ear of the latter. It’s a devastating combination, as quickly becomes apparent.

The Lonesome West is seen as an “Erinization” of Sam Shephard’s True West and the major theme – of estranged and warring brothers coming together – is similar. However, the intervention in the work of Erin as place and subtext brings with it an originality and interest that takes it way beyond the 1980 Shephard play.

Two brothers, Valene (Travis Cotton) and Coleman (Toby Schmitz) return home after their father’s funeral. They bicker and joust over Valene’s obsession with small religious figurines and his equally obsessive meanness and Coleman’s shiftless disregard for Valene’s possessions – all carefully marked with a texta’d “V”, from tea cups and glasses to kitchen chairs and table – and his studied bone idleness and lack of money.

A major bone of contention between the brothers is Valene’s spiteful way with his packets of potato crisps and other food and jealously hoarded bottles of potheen (moonshine) purchased from Girleen (Sybilla Budd). Girleen (real name Mary, though she’d feckin stab you in the eye iffen you said so out loud) is a wild girl, too full of life and colour for the grim little village; she’s saving her potheen money to escape.

The fourth visitor to the house of mourning is Father Welsh (Ryan Johnson) who is such a self-effacing nonentity no one can be fashed to call him by his right name and he is often called Father Walsh, which is good enough for a giggle until he reveals to Girleen that his first name is actually Roderick. To his dismay, neither Valene nor Coleman seem in any way saddened by their father’s death (an accident with a shotgun wielded by Coleman); instead their main concerns are whose turn it is to read a supermarket trashy mag and whether or not Coleman can use anything in the house – which now belongs to Valene.

Much as happens in many households and among many siblings, what occurs is at once everything and nothing. Director Peter Carstairs has worked in film to date and his debut as a stage director is a fine one. The four actors are of the very highest calibre anyway and the dynamics between them crackle with humour and tension. Schmitz and Cotton are chalk and cheese, petrol and flame; and they make terrible and uproariously funny poetry of the oafish yet dainty tones of Connemara English.

As Girleen, Sybilla Budd crafts one of the year’s best performances with her portrayal of energised, plaintive yet comical and coltish young womanhood. While Ryan Johnson’s luckless but well meaning Catholic priest is the sorry focus of the others’ teasing and, finally, their earnest attempts to reform.

Designer Jacob Nash makes a suitably depressing front room of a depressing poor Irish house and the stove (in burnt orange, very 70s hip) he found for Valene to purchase and crow over is a master stroke.

All in all, this is a fabulous feckin production and you’d be outta ya feckin minds to miss it. Don’t say y’haven’t been feckin warned.