“If you’re going to talk about sheep deformities, hand me the bottle”
Third up for the Michael Grandage Company is ‘the Daniel Radcliffe one’, the first
major revival of Martin McDonagh’s The Cripple of Inishmaan. But though it is
being sold on the strength of its star, it is much more of an ensemble piece
than first impressions would allow, as a picture of 1930s rural Irish life in
all its brusque humour, unstinting relentlessness and occasional vicious kicks
is built up. A break from the old routine is offered when a Hollywood film crew
arrives on the neighbouring island of Inishmore and no-one is more excited
about the opportunity than Cripple Billy, a young orphan lad blighted by
physical disability from birth and who spots an opportunity to escape the blunt
cruelty of the daily taunts.
Still in previews, Grandage’s production doesn’t quite seem to have decided how
it wants to straddle the line between stereotypical olde Oirish sentimentality
and McDonagh’s more brutal sensibilities which might be familiar to those that have
seen The Beauty Queen of Leenane. Part of the problem lies in a vein of comedy that
feels somewhat uninspired so it does, relying on the repeated utterances,
without malice mind, of words and phrases that ought to jar in our more
politically correct times. But this is essentially one gag extended throughout
much of the show and it soon wears thin – the over-emphasis on how kookily
different things were back then and over
there just isn’t enough to hang a play on, especially when Grandage is playing
it as safe as this.
And I also felt that Radcliffe has a way to go before he’s ready to play the
part of Cripple Billy. His manifestation of Billy’s affliction is clearly sensitively
researched but lacks the raw physicality that should accompany one so bruised
by life and one longs for him to submerge entirely into the depths of the character
to create something more convincing in his portrayal of someone struggling on
the cusp of becoming a young man and establishing some kind of physical and emotional
independence – something that could well come as the run progresses. So the
focus turns instead to the bustling busybodies of Inishmaan who are mostly very
well acted but not a one of them feels like a real person.
Ingrid Craigie and Gillian Hanna hem and haw vividly as Billy’s adopted aunties who
point out the shortcomings of the world as they run their shop; Pat Shortt and
June Watson pair up effectively as the village gossip and his ailing mother who
he keeps topped up with whiskey; and Sarah Greene has an untamed quality as the
wild egg-cracking Helen who Billy dreams of kissing one day. But there’s rarely
a sense of genuine emotional life behind any of these people, keeping them perilously
close to caricature – though possibly as much McDonagh’s fault as Grandage’s – and
keeping the audience at arm’s length from the whole affair.
Consequently I really didn’t enjoy this that much – it certainly didn’t move me
and I barely laughed. For a tenner though, one can’t complain too much and
there did seem to be those in the audience who enjoyed themselves more than us
(the reaction throughout was increasingly muted though, I have to say) but this was altogether
too polite for my liking.
Running time: 2 hours 25 minutes (with interval)
Booking until 31st August
Labels: Conor MacNeill, Daniel Radcliffe, Gary Lilburn, Gillian Hanna, Ingrid Craigie, June Watson, Martin McDonagh, Pádraic Delaney, Pat Shortt, Sarah Greene