The Cripple of Inishmaan
Opening Night: April 20, 2014
Closing: July 20, 2014
Theater: Cort Theatre
Daniel Radcliffe stars in this new production of Martin McDonagh’s The Cripple of Inishmaan. Set on the remote island of Inishmaan off the west coast of Ireland, word arrives that a Hollywood film is being made on the neighboring island of Inishmore. The one person who wants to be in the film more than anybody is young Cripple Billy, if only to break away from the bitter tedium of his daily life.
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April 20, 2014
Some existential energy was left behind at the Cort following the recent departure of Waiting for Godot, and it’s somehow been absorbed by the new production of Martin McDonagh’s The Cripple of Inishmaan, now enjoying a Broadway transfer with megastar Daniel Radcliffe as Billy, the damaged dreamer of the title. McDonagh’s dark comedy, previously seen in 1998 at the Public, and a decade later at the Atlantic, has a plot that could be summarized this way: “Life sucks, and I’d probably be better off dead. But oh, a pretty girl may just like me, so perhaps I’ll stick around.” We’ve all had days that are as touch-and-go—certainly, Ian McKellen’s Gogo could relate, no?
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April 20, 2014
Jaded film students will get a huge kick out of Slippy Helen, one of the virulently opinionated characters in The Cripple of Inishmaan, sharing her unappreciative views on Robert Flaherty’s milestone 1934 documentary, Man of Aran. "What’s to fecking see anyways but more wet fellas with awful jumpers on them?" she complains in shrill tones, in between torturing her brother and taunting an old woman about her enfeebled mind. Helen’s terse assessment at the end of the church-hall screening on a stained bed sheet is even more blunt: "Oh thank Christ the fecker’s over. A pile of fecking shite." With typically spry wit and irreverent ethnographic insight, Martin McDonagh’s grubby jewel of a play uses the shooting of Flaherty’s seminal non-fiction film as the spark for a pitch-black comedy about Irishness. The triptych portrait of Daniel Radcliffe on the Playbill cover makes no mistake about the marquee draw, and the former Harry Potter star has never been better, more than measuring up in this flawless ensemble. But to quote Hamlet, "the play’s the thing" in Michael Grandage’s cracking production, which makes an entertainingly boozy brew of humor both sweet and savage, melancholy sentimentality, lacerating sorrow and wicked cruelty.
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April 20, 2014
It’s the small victories that pull us through life’s greatest disappointments. Oh, and you’re going to die. Those are just two of the lessons in Martin McDonagh’s dark comedy The Cripple of Inishmaan, now making its Broadway debut at the Cort Theatre in a production by London’s Michael Grandage Company. Daniel Radcliffe reprises his WhatsOnStage Award-winning performance as Billy, the titular "cripple" with a heart of gold and a boatload of disappointment. If you enjoy nothing more than two hours of schadenfreude, this is the play for you. You’d be in good company, according to McDonagh. Lots of people (particularly the Irish) enjoy reveling in the misfortunes of others. The Irish-British playwright’s unique brand of black comedy (and often violence) has helped make him a staple of Broadway over the past decade, most recently with 2010’s A Behanding in Spokane.
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April 20, 2014
In The Cripple of Inishmaan, Martin McDonagh’s sublime tragi-comedy about life on Ireland’s desolate Aran Islands, there are two old biddies who desperately dote on Daniel Radcliffe — and who wouldn’t? Having earned his legit chops (in Equus and How to Succeed …), the grown-up teen idol turns in a warm, sympathetic performance as the sweet-tempered but broken-bodied “cripple” who has long resigned himself to the gleeful cruelty of his cloddish neighbors. The production also gives Gotham its first look at the work of the extraordinary new company formed by Michael Grandage, the estimable one-time artistic director of the Donmar Warehouse. Maybe it takes a black Irish heart to fully appreciate McDonagh’s savage humor. But from bizarre stage plays like The Lieutenant of Inishmore to a psychotic film like Seven Psychopaths, the scribe always tempers his killing wit with affection, and even sympathy for his victims.
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April 20, 2014
Not content with post–Harry Potter film work, Daniel Radcliffe keeps racking up stage cred. His latest adventure is a revival of Martin McDonagh’s savage village comedy, in which the title character inspires equal parts affection and loathing among the locals. Michael Grandage directs the London transfer. Profiles of playwright Martin McDonagh report how, in 1994, the young Anglo-Irish scribe holed up in his childhood home and cranked out the drafts of seven plays in an incredible nine months. After seeing Michael Grandage’s lush but underwhelming revival of The Cripple of Inishmaan, I believe it. Despite a slick veneer and satirical brio, the piece comes across as a rush job by a beginner with a huge chip on his shoulder. Although the undeniably clever and talented McDonagh became a theatrical rock star in the 1990s, his bloated parody of Irish folk drama is repetitious, inert and shallow.
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April 20, 2014
The best gossip on Broadway these days is nothing you can read in the tabloids. You’ll have to hear it in person, and believe me, you’ll want to. This is very deep dish — layered with malice and kindness, truth and conjecture, and all the mixed motives that make human beings such endlessly intriguing subjects of speculation. The forum for this fascinating tittle-tattle is the Cort Theater, where Michael Grandage’s splendid production of Martin McDonagh’s The Cripple of Inishmaan opened on Sunday night. By the way — and wouldn’t you know? — there’s a movie star involved, as there often is when a Broadway show generates much talk. But the star in question, Daniel Radcliffe, isn’t here just to flex his charisma for fans. In the title role of this glimmeringly dark comedy from 1996, Mr. Radcliffe — the boy wizard in the immensely successful Harry Potter movie franchise — is entirely convincing as the boy who is regarded as least likely to succeed at pretty much anything in his God-forsaken rural Irish town.
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