The Lieutenant of Inishmore

I had read Martin McDonagh's The Lieutenant of Inishmore a while back and found myself laughing and grimacing at his twisty, perverse look at family, violence, and politics.

It was with a little trepidation that I attended opening night, since often the actualization of a play fails to live up to a perfectionist's imagination.

At opening night at the Station, Rick Orr directed a handsome cast in this latest production and I'm pleased and relieved to say, it pretty much rocks.

The cast of eight is eminently watchable. Principle players Coy Wentworth and Gary Ambler -- as a duo attempting to disguise the death of a cat -- play off each other in ways that frequently caused me to emit unexpected spurts of laughter; the Irish insurgent duo Mathew Green and Colleen Klein gave off palpable sexual sparks, particularly when lavishing a lubricant of blood over one another.

The final scene's coup de theatre is extreme, combining the coldness of a blood bath with the fuzzy warmth of kittens. The audience did not know whether to moan or coo. Actually, they did both. Loudly. While laughing.

Even so, one can't mistake the political overtones. It's not just about Ireland. It's about a world where violence erupts over trifles, a world where we have learned to shrug off distant wars as just more television.

Oddly, seeing The Lieutenant of Inishmore may re-sensitize the viewer, rather than desensitize, to the violence all around us. But it's not a lecture. It's not spinach. You'll have a good time and then ask yourself, did I just have a good time watching that?