>>PREVIEW
THE CRIPPLE OF INISHMAAN
Opens March 6
Theatre Calgary
Max Bell Theatre (Epcor Centre)
Sheep and cows give up any notion of moving in the eternal fog settling over the rolling hills. Their neighbours, drunken men and women sprawled in trenches, raise empty pint glasses for mumbled toasts to Blarney Stones and dead leprechauns felled by the bastard English. All to the soundtrack of perpetual bagpipes, interrupted only by Bono’s cover of "Danny Boy" when bagpipers change shifts. Welcome to Ireland.
Or at least the cartoonish misconception most Canadians drink to. Director Ben Barnes is adamant that audiences will find nary a shamrock in Theatre Calgary’s production of The Cripple of Inishmaan. As the first play in Theatre Calgary’s International Experience series, Barnes relishes the chance to introduce a more authentic take on his home country.
"I haven’t seen a production of this play elsewhere in North America," he notes in his subdued brogue. "But I’ve seen enough photographs of theatres I’ve worked in to know they give some reverence to the idea of a traditional kind of Ireland. In some cases, I suspect the people producing the play think that’s the way Ireland is. Of course it’s not."
The Ireland in The Cripple of Inishmaan is populated by characters living on the axis between the sentimental and the cruel. Characters can mock the clergy and the drowning of someone’s parents, yet later reveal genuine affection for each other in their remote Irish community. On the periphery is Billy, an orphaned young man crippled at birth, who the rest of the community disregards, save for his two aunts. The rumours of a Hollywood production crew coming to Ireland to shoot a movie give Billy a chance to escape the drudgery of it all. The play takes pointed jabs at America’s image abroad and its reflection on the Irish provides plenty of fodder for the director.
"The idea of America to Irish people in the 19th and 20th century," notes Barnes, "was as a land of opportunity. One of the things satirized in the play is the fact that American people tend to have a rosy view of Ireland and Irish people. There’s this perception of Ireland as the land of beautiful people with quirky personalities and of course Ireland is like anywhere else, it has its share of malicious people. You get that wonderful self-congratulation of Irish people that you get in Ireland, and yet at the same time you get the viciousness."
The play comes from the pen of Barnes’s fellow countryman Martin McDonagh, considered one of the first great dramatists of the 21st century by those who make such considerations. Not even 30 or college educated, he wrote all his plays, including The Cripple of Inishmaan, within a nine month period while unemployed. Strangely enough, McDonagh has expressed great disdain for the theatre, going as far as to denounce his plays as the early works of a naive filmmaker who thought he had no options. Barnes, though, would rather concentrate on those cinematic elements in his work that are unique to the theatre.
"There’s something heightened about a play like The Cripple of Inishmaan," says the director. "The writing is heightened, the stage directions are heightened. I tried to make it very two-dimensional. If you could, at any moment, freeze the action, it would tell a story in its own right. It’s very sculpted in that regard, it’s not a very fussy production. It owes more to Beckett in terms of the way I staged it.
I’m approaching the play from a standpoint where I’m very familiar with Irish literature going right back to the beginning of the last century. I know to what extent this play is a lampoon of that kind of work. This is really John Millington Synge meets Quentin Tarantino, that’s where the play resides."
Despite Barnes’s affinity for the material, the play still possessed its own challenges. McDonagh wrote this play with a particular style of Hibernal English similar to the one his father originally spoke. A language with its own peculiarities that even Irish actors find difficult to grasp, Barnes and his cast of mostly non-Irish actors welcomed the challenge.
"A play like Martin McDonagh’s play," says the director, "which is very post-modern to give it a tag, is a very black comedy which requires precise play on the part of the actors. I tend, as a director, to strip back the non-essentials, as far as sets and business is concerned. I try to distil the scene, play it down to its essence for the actors."
Calgary audiences will soon get the chance to peruse the director’s decidedly Irish vision as the play hits the stage this week. No giant four-leaf clovers will emblazon the stage. This will be the Ireland as Barnes knows it and he hopes Calgarians come out for this unique experience.
"It’s a very entertaining play," Barnes says. "It’s very black comedy. It’s very irreverent and politically incorrect, which is refreshing this day and age. I know the kind of repertoires associated with regional theatres like Theatre Calgary. I just hope the younger audience that’s out in Calgary, that work and live in the city, actually come to this play." |
Copyright ©2007 FFWD. All rights reserved.