At first sight, the plays in Martin McDonagh’s Leenane trilogy look like they belong in some pre-industrial era, a time before electricity. Set in a village in the west of Ireland, they have the timeless flavour of the plays of JM Synge, as if these stories of narrow lives and thwarted ambitions could have been played out in any century.
But listen closer to The Lonesome West (1997), the third in the trilogy, and you hear mention of vol-au-vents, Hill Street Blues and all-women football teams. It is still a world defined by austerity, Catholicism and poteen, but it’s also a world of today. If the characters feel trapped, it is partly because they have been left behind by modernity.
Anticipating the enclosed universes of playwright Enda Walsh, The Lonesome West is about two grown-up brothers locked in a battle of adolescent squabbling. When they try to break the pattern, a dark parody of a modern-day truth-and-reconciliation process emerges. Instead of putting the past behind them, they use their apologies as new weapons to open old wounds.
It is funny and grim and, in Andy Arnold’s production, superbly played. Keith Fleming is all snarling malevolence as the murderous Coleman; David Ganly a smug bundle of boyish pettiness as his brother Valene; Michael Dylan, a mixed-up mess of doubts as Father Welsh, the alcoholic parish priest; and Kirsty Punton, all teenage pluck and insecurity as Girleen, a schoolgirl who is in love with Father Welsh. They are vile, foolish and ineffectual, yet true to themselves and touchingly vulnerable.
- At the Tron, Glasgow, until 23 July. Box Office: 0141 552 4267
