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The Lonesome West
by Martin McDonagh
This is comedy at its blackest, with no subject safe from ridicule.
The play is set in a small west Irish community, where brothers Coleman
and Valene live together in their dead father’s house. The secrets
they hold bind them together in a childish resentment, mutual torture
and undying hostility. When their guilt-ridden and alcoholic priest
tries to get them to bury the hatchet, their hatred only intensifies,
leading to an orgy of destruction.
Sardonic, beautifully tender and gut-achingly funny, it successfully
walks the line between cruelty and comedy.
This, the third and final part of the Leenane trilogy, is a stand-alone play: it isn’t necessary to see the previous plays (The Beauty Queen of Leenane and A Skull in Connemara) to enjoy this one.
Suitable for age 14+. Contains strong swearing, and some violence.
“…sustains the black comedy and
dark, bitter backbeat of McDonagh’s drama with an almost perfect
sense of mood and pace”
SCOTSMAN Joyce McMillan ****
“As sibling rivalry is taken to extremes,
the shabby brutality of the brothers' plight becomes a viciously intelligent
sitcom …an electrifying, unmissable experience”
THE HERALD Neil Cooper
