Review: A Skull In Connemara // Gaeity Theatre

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WORDS Heather Keane

With a playbill that boasts “the acclaimed writer & director of In Bruges & Seven Psychopaths”, the Gaeity’s audience is assumed to have an already fond relationship with A Skull in Connemara’s author. Decadent Theatre’s production of McDonagh’s second play builds on his pitiless comedy that has become so well-known but at times misses the darkness that McDonagh’s texts exude.

The action begins in the cottage of Mick Dowd, a widower set with the task of digging up graves to make way for new bones. Mairtin – the local gombeen who is easily identified as one of McDonagh’s trademark adolescent outcasts with a psychopathic streak – bursts in to announce that he has been assigned by the council to help him. His grandmother, Mary Johnny, oversees this pairing and is roused to gossip when Mairtin reveals they’ll be working on the plot Oona resides in: Mick’s wife whose death left him with a prison sentence for drink-driving, a verdict not wholly accepted by his neighbours.

From here, the action is a little slow to take off as Garret Keogh’s portrayal of the disenchanted Mick leans a little on the over-dramatic, opposing Maria McDermottroe’s all-too-familiar croaking about the weather; “What summer we had. We had no summer.” Jarlath Tivnan’s energy and flare for delivery of the darkly comical lines A Skull is littered with, brings life to the cottage and the play is bolstered by his performance. Labelled by director Andrew Flynn as a “professional scourge”, Mairtin’s relentless comedy had the audience rippling with laughter.

The impenetrable comedy of the play is at once the triumph and the doubting of this production: it suits the Gaiety’s bombastic reputation but can leave the audience feeling uncomfortably complicit. Mairtin’s disbelief that he could find anyone around here who hadn’t killed somebody drink-driving is a carefree jab at rural Ireland’s drinking culture, but the continuous hilarity can make it hard to know if you’re supposed to laugh along with, or at Mick’s homophobic accusations. This is where the black tint of McDonagh is at times a little too underplayed.

There are many qualities to this production that make it well-deserving of a visit. Owen MacCarthaigh’s set is phenomenal, the walls of the house collapsing between scenes to double up as graveyard foundations. Watching Keogh dig a pit to his wife’s bones on-stage is a rare treat and the action is augmented by the realisation in the later cottage scenes that to enter or exit the house, the actor must make way through a dug grave.

Keogh’s acting does pick up as the play goes on and his character becomes more infused with poteen, and the best moment in the play by far is the incredible pairing of Dana’s “All Kinds of Everything” to a scene which sees Mairtin and Mick bash the newly dug skeletons of his locale into skitters.

McDonagh’s text is brought to vibrant life by Decadent’s production, a company well fit to entertain the masses McDonagh’s name should attract. A visit to this show will entertain and provide a critique of Ireland’s vision of itself, a place where A Skull sees drink driving deaths as ten-a-penny and passes no heed to confessions of bottling girls down at the disco.

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