Venice film festival: Martin McDonagh reunites Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson in remotest Ireland for an oddball study of isolation and hurt
Martin McDonagh’s new film is a macabre black comedy of toxic male pride and wounded male feelings, a shaggy-dog story of wretchedness and a dance of death between aggression and self-harm, set on an imaginary island called Inisherin off the Irish coast. It’s happening in 1923 during the civil war; the additional symbolic acrimony is offered to us on a take-it-or-leave-it basis.
As with so many of McDonagh’s works, the glint of the unburied hatchet is all too visible in the murk, and the setting is a stylised and ironised Irish rural scene not so very far from John Millington Synge. Mutilation is a familiar motif. There are plenty of genuine laughs in this movie, but each of them seems to dovetail into a banshee-wail of pain.
Martin McDonagh’s new film is a macabre black comedy of toxic male pride and wounded male feelings, a shaggy-dog story of wretchedness and a dance of death between aggression and self-harm, set on an imaginary island called Inisherin off the Irish coast. It’s happening in 1923 during the civil war; the additional symbolic acrimony is offered to us on a take-it-or-leave-it basis.
As with so many of McDonagh’s works, the glint of the unburied hatchet is all too visible in the murk, and the setting is a stylised and ironised Irish rural scene not so very far from John Millington Synge. Mutilation is a familiar motif. There are plenty of genuine laughs in this movie, but each of them seems to dovetail into a banshee-wail of pain.
- 9/5/2022
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
By Peter Debruge
It’s been nearly three decades since “In Bruges” writer-director Martin McDonagh decided to try his hand at writing for the theater, knocking out the first drafts of “The Lieutenant of Inishmore” — a dark comedy so violent that the actors find them slipping in all the fake blood on stage — and “The Cripple of Inishmaan,” as well as five other plays, during an unthinkably prolific nine-month span.
He wrote like a man possessed during that time, channeling the words of the raging, salty-mouthed Irish characters he heard in his head. Once produced, six of those plays propelled McDonagh to international fame — and a decade later, an Oscar-winning filmmaking career. But he buried one of those first seven scripts, “The Banshees of Inisheer,” which was intended to round out his Aran Islands trilogy.
Now, as McDonagh arrives at the Venice Film Festival with a similar-sounding film, “The Banshees of Inisherin,...
It’s been nearly three decades since “In Bruges” writer-director Martin McDonagh decided to try his hand at writing for the theater, knocking out the first drafts of “The Lieutenant of Inishmore” — a dark comedy so violent that the actors find them slipping in all the fake blood on stage — and “The Cripple of Inishmaan,” as well as five other plays, during an unthinkably prolific nine-month span.
He wrote like a man possessed during that time, channeling the words of the raging, salty-mouthed Irish characters he heard in his head. Once produced, six of those plays propelled McDonagh to international fame — and a decade later, an Oscar-winning filmmaking career. But he buried one of those first seven scripts, “The Banshees of Inisheer,” which was intended to round out his Aran Islands trilogy.
Now, as McDonagh arrives at the Venice Film Festival with a similar-sounding film, “The Banshees of Inisherin,...
- 9/2/2022
- by Peter Debruge
- Variety Film + TV
★★★★☆ Revenge is a dish best served over several courses in Sean Brosnan's brutal redneck noir tale My Father, Die. Full of Old Testament values and punishing degradation, it pits a father and son against each other in skirmishes that go well beyond traditional family rows into the realm of pure Freudian nightmare. Brosnan dedicates the film to the controversial Irish playwright and poet J.M. Synge, whose famous play The Playboy of the Western World is - like Brosnan's directorial debut - themed around patricide.
- 8/26/2016
- by CineVue
- CineVue
Film buffs know Martin McDonagh as the writer-director of In Bruges, the most wickedly well-written and snappily directed thriller debut in years − it won the 2009 Bafta for Best Original Screenplay − but before the movies he took the theatre world by storm. His two trilogies of plays, set in the west of Ireland and the Aran Islands, were modern deconstructions of the works of John Millington Synge. They took the wild and amoral milieu of Synge's Playboy of the Western World, and played about with it, conjuring a community where, for instance, food could be bought at the local shop for a currency of news and gossip alone. The results were surreal and funny, if a touch too clever by half: McDonagh seemed keener on playing games with the possibility of theatre than evoking strong dramatic emotions.
- 12/9/2012
- The Independent - Film
The Kleban Foundation has announced the winners of the 20th annual Kleban Prize in Musical Theatre: Peter Mills, for most promising musical theater lyricist, and Barry Wyner, for most promising musical theater librettist.Mills' most recent musical is "Golden Boy of the Blue Ridge," a bluegrass adaptation of J.M. Synge's play "The Playboy of the Western World" set in 1930s Appalachia, for which Mills also wrote the music. He received the 2007 Fred Ebb Award for Musical Theatre Songwriting. Wyner was the original arranger and music director of "Gutenberg! The Musical!" at New York's Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre and has previously won both the Richard Rodgers Award and the Jerry Bock Award. Wyner and Mills will each receive $100,000.Edward L. Kleban, the Tony- and Pulitzer-winning lyricist of "A Chorus Line," provided in his will for two annual awards, to be given to the most promising lyricist and librettist in American musical theater.
- 4/15/2010
- backstage.com
Okay, here's what I want to know: What's with Philip Roth and Woody Allen? I only ask after trotting to my local movie palace some months back for Allen's latest astringent 92-minute laffer, Whatever Works, and paging diligently these recent days through Roth's newest probe of a novel, The Humbling (Houghton Mifflin, 140pp., $22). Both opuses (opi?) concern a man of a certain age (or, you might say, a bladder of a certain age) energetically and relentlessly pursued by a much younger woman. In Whatever Works Boris Yellnikoff is 60-ish; in The Humbling Simon Axler is 70-ish. Furthermore, for Axler, the pursuer is an avowed lesbian called Pegeen Mike Stapleford. (Note that Pegeen Mike is also the name of the barmaid who falls for the comically mendacious title figure in John Millington Synge's Playboy of...
- 11/2/2009
- by David Finkle
- Huffington Post
A Noise Within (Anw) -- the acclaimed classical repertory theatre company hailed by critics as "adventurous," "compelling and current," "ingenuity at work," "a bona fide class act," and "what great theatre is all about" -- continues its trajectory in the 2009-10 season with a slate of six masterworks about individuals who forge their own destinies, much like Anw itself, which takes a momentous step on its journey to a permanent home with a Fall '09 groundbreaking for its Pasadena theatre. The 18th Season, titled "On the Wings of Fate!", marks the company's last in its current Glendale location before the move in Fall '10 to its spacious new venue. The Fall 2009 line-up opens October 3 with Shakespeare's Richard III, followed by a new adaptation of Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment and Michael Frayn's Noises Off. The Spring 2010 offerings are Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, Clifford Odets' Awake and Sing!
- 7/23/2009
- BroadwayWorld.com
The Pearl Theatre Company is pleased to announce its 2009/2010 Season, produced for the first time at New York City Center Stage II. The season includes the eccentric, spirited comedy The Playboy Of The Western World by J.M. Synge, directed by incoming artistic director J.R. Sullivan; Bernard Shaw's giddy comedy Misalliance; a whirlwind adaptation of Charles Dickens' Hard Times by Stephen Jeffreys; and the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Subject Was Roses by Frank D. Gilroy.
- 5/26/2009
- BroadwayWorld.com
Through staged readings, song, dance, panel discussions, and films, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts will mark the centennial of the death of famed Irish playwright and poet J. M Synge and examine his 1904 tragedy Riders to the Sea. "On an Anniversary": J.M. Synge, 1871 - 1909 is a free series of five programs that explore the importance and influence of this writer and co-founder of the Abbey Theatre.
- 3/17/2009
- BroadwayWorld.com
Tony Award-winning Irish actress Anna Manahan has died of multiple organ failure at the age of 84.
Manahan, whose career on the stage, television and film spanned over 60 years, died on Sunday in Waterford, Ireland.
She made her Broadway debut in Brian Friel's Lovers in 1969, which earned her a Tony nomination for Best Supporting or Featured Actress in a Drama.
But it was her role as Mag Folan in famed Irish playwright Martin McDonagh's 1996 production Beauty Queen that finally earned her the Tony in 1998 for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama.
She also starred in plays written by Irish writers including J.M. Synge, Oscar Wilde, James Joyce and Sean O'Casey, and appeared in numerous TV series, most recently in 2004's Fair City.
Her film career saw her star alongside the likes of Sir Laurence Olivier, Peter Cushing, Kenneth Moore, and Dame Maggie Smith, while her best-known roles were in 1991's Hear My Song and 1994's A Man of No Importance, featuring Albert Finney and Sir Michael Gambon.
In 2002, Manahan was granted the freedom of the city of Waterford for life achievement in the arts.
She is survived by two brothers, Val and Joe.
Manahan, whose career on the stage, television and film spanned over 60 years, died on Sunday in Waterford, Ireland.
She made her Broadway debut in Brian Friel's Lovers in 1969, which earned her a Tony nomination for Best Supporting or Featured Actress in a Drama.
But it was her role as Mag Folan in famed Irish playwright Martin McDonagh's 1996 production Beauty Queen that finally earned her the Tony in 1998 for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama.
She also starred in plays written by Irish writers including J.M. Synge, Oscar Wilde, James Joyce and Sean O'Casey, and appeared in numerous TV series, most recently in 2004's Fair City.
Her film career saw her star alongside the likes of Sir Laurence Olivier, Peter Cushing, Kenneth Moore, and Dame Maggie Smith, while her best-known roles were in 1991's Hear My Song and 1994's A Man of No Importance, featuring Albert Finney and Sir Michael Gambon.
In 2002, Manahan was granted the freedom of the city of Waterford for life achievement in the arts.
She is survived by two brothers, Val and Joe.
- 3/10/2009
- WENN
The New School For Drama Presents Fourth Annual Random Acts! One-act Play Festival With Works By John M. Synge, Thorton Wilder, And Many More February 19, through April 25, 2009, Thursdays-Saturdays, 8:00 p.m.; Saturday matinees, 3:00 p.m. The New School for Drama, 151 Bank Street, 3rd floor For five weeks this spring, the Random Acts! One-Act Play Festival invites audiences toexperience the best of The New School for Drama's up-and-coming actors, directors, and playwrights. Free to the public, the festival features the work of 24 actors, 8 directors, and 6new playwrights in 15 presentations of plays drawn from classic and contemporary repertories-including 6 original works by Drama's playwrights featured in the final two weeks! February 19, through April 25, 2009 Thursdays-Saturdays, 8:00 p.m.; Saturday matinees, 3:00 p.m. Where:The New School for Drama, 151 Bank Street, 3rd FloorWHAT: A full schedule is attached. Please note: productions, performers, and directors are subject to change. Ticket Info: Free. Reservations recommended for general admission.
- 1/27/2009
- BroadwayWorld.com
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