Ha Ha BANG! - The Lieutenant of Inishmore

The Lieutenant of Inishmore bears the mark of Martin McDonagh, who might be more popularly recognized for his film “In Bruges.”  Like Lieutenant, “In Bruges” humanizes violent killers through comedy, but it avoids the political commentary that makes Lieutenant both a better story and more controversial.  Though hearty and nutritious, Berkeley Rep’s mounting of Lieutenant is bland and vaguely frustrating, like a baked potato without bacon bits, or sex without an orgasm.  If blandness is the crime, then my primary suspect is Les Waters, the director, who potentially mismanaged the play’s comedic possibilities.  This criticism, however, must be taken with all the spice not found in the production, for Lieutenant’s comedy is contested with the same frequency as my misspelling of the word ‘lieutenant’ in this blog (thank god for spell-check).

I spent most of Lieutenant entertained, but vaguely dissatisfied, due to the fact that I was watching a comedy but I wasn’t really laughing.  I registered the humor of each joke, and sometimes even chuckled.  But the jokes felt generic and they lacked the texture, specificity, and development needed to make them truly funny.  We recognize the irony and laugh when a female character sports short hair, wears army boots, and roots for terrorists while savaging the county with a bee-bee gun.  We laugh slightly harder when she tells us that she has shot out cow eyes as a protest against English rule.  But that’s where the laughter ends, not because she becomes too serious, but because the texture of her character then goes undeveloped.  What else is potentially funny about her?  The script takes it to another level when it has this woman don a dress to impress her heartthrob, but Waters spends almost no time focusing on this new ironic development.  She seems as comfortable in the dress as she did in the boots, and the rich ground for exploring the irony of a woman uncomfortable in woman’s clothing goes untilled.

This is just an example of several moments where McDonagh provides a set up, but the director makes uninteresting choices.  The long scene in which two morons disassemble bodies onstage was ripe for gags (pun intended), but again, the production barely lingers on the possibilities.  It’s as if Waters is relying on the script alone to be funny without anyone else having to give it life.

But before I continue to rag on Les Waters, we have to ask ourselves just how funny Martin McDonagh really is, and we must challenge any assertion that claims a comedy isn’t funny enough.  Comedy, it seems to me, is in no small part a social and personal construct.  Case and point is Dr. Hasan, who I had the pleasure of meeting last week while he visited the U.S. from Iraq.  Dr. Hasan doesn’t speak English very well, and while viewing Lieutenant, he was terrified to find himself surrounded by an audience laughing at torture, murder, and terrorism.  Dr. Hasan has experienced these things in Baghdad, where he is without the luxury of a proscenium.  We could argue that he didn’t find it funny because his experienced lacked an integral part, the script, but our experience similarly lacks an integral part, personal memories of ongoing terrorist violence. We laugh, he doesn’t, who’s right?

In the case of Lieutenant, I don’t think it matters, because the play is worth seeing even if you don’t laugh.  Robert McKee says that comedy is an attack, a subversive device by which the comedian exposes the subject, usually calling attention to a contradiction or paradox.  If nothing more, Lieutenant deftly exposes the impact of manipulated information on Northern Ireland politics, ridicules the unpatriotic activities of patriot groups, and challenges the fallacious logic of gender binaries.  Most of all, Lieutenant questions us about our arbitrary distinctions between who to treat ‘humanely’ and who deserves violence.

I also would like to give kudos to whoever composes the Berkeley Rep’s programs.  Their programs consistently offer well written articles full of dramaturgical and historical context for their productions.  Additionally, Tony Taccone’s Artistic Director’s Note refreshingly introduces the play with substantive information without defending his choice to present it.  I am tired of insecure directors or artistic director’s notes that defend the play, explain the meaning, or idolize the playwright as doing critically important work.

The Lieutenant of Inishmore deserves the awards it’s received.  Though this incarnation of it sooths like a pleasant Irish jig instead of electrifying like a Flogging Molly riff, it made me think and it made me feel, and that leaves me mostly satisfied.