Martin McDonagh

Martin McDonagh (born 26 March 1970) is a contemporary English-born Irish playwright and film director.

Life

McDonagh was born in Camberwell, London, England to Irish parents. His mother (originally from Killeenduff, Easky, County Sligo) and his father (originally from Lettermullen, Connemara, County Galway) later moved back to Galway, leaving Martin and his brother (screenwriter John Michael McDonagh) in London, where Martin began collecting unemployment benefits at age 16.

During visits to Galway in the summers, McDonagh became acquainted with the dialect of English spoken in western Ireland, which he would later put to work in his plays. His ironic combination of coarse country language, primal symbolism and black humour represents a peculiar fusion of the work of John Millington Synge with the modern drama of Harold Pinter, David Mamet and British television comedy. ^{[citation needed]}

He has been awarded Critics' Circle Theatre Awards for Most Promising Playwright in 1996.

Separated into two trilogies, McDonagh’s first six plays are located in and around County Galway, where he spent his holidays as a child. The first is set in Leenane, a small village on the west coast of Ireland, and refers to The Beauty Queen of Leenane (1996), A Skull in Connemara (1997) and The Lonesome West (1997). His second trilogy consists of The Cripple of Inishmaan (1997), The Lieutenant of Inishmore (2001) and The Banshees of Inisheer (which was never published, as McDonagh insisted it "isn't any good")^[1], scattered across a trio of islands just off the coast of County Galway. His first non-Irish play, The Pillowman, is set in a fictitious totalitarian state, and premiered at the National Theatre in 2003. He has also penned two prize-winning radio plays, including The Tale of the Wolf and the Woodcutter^[2].

Since then, McDonagh has moved away from theatre in order to focus on his first passion, film. Following the success of Six Shooter in 2006, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film, McDonagh has written and directed his first full-length feature, In Bruges, which was widely applauded by critics in 2008.

Controversy

McDonagh has his critics - especially within Ireland - who view his work with suspicion. His English birth and London childhood have caused many to question his credentials, validity and sincerity regarding Irish life. Many Irish scholars feel that his work is in fact stage Irish. A review by Elizabeth O'Neill for RTÉ said :"A modern day Synge or an English chancer? Martin McDonagh's plays have been courting controversy since The Beauty Queen of Leenane took the world stage by storm in 1996. Audiences have been divided roughly into two camps; those who think he's captured the black humour and zeitgeist of a postmodern rural Ireland, and those who see him as making a mockery of Ireland and the Irish by lampooning that caricature of old, the 'stage-Irish' fool."^[3]

The Leenane Trilogy

The Beauty Queen of Leenane (1996)

The story of the dysfunctional relationship between a spinster and her domineering mother, during the course of which the former faces her last chance at love, and the latter faces a rather grim end. Nominated for Tony Award for Best Play in 1998.

A Skull in Connemara (1997)

A Connemara man has the job of smashing the skeletons in old graves, and his newest customer is the wife he killed years before, which may or may not have been accidental.

The Lonesome West (1997)

An Erinization of Sam Shepard's True West, in which two brothers bicker in the aftermath of the supposedly accidental fatal shooting of their father. Nominated for Tony Award for Best Play in 1999.

The Aran Islands Trilogy

The Cripple of Inishmaan (1996)

A crippled teenager schemes to get a part in Man of Aran. Dark comedy ensues.

The Lieutenant of Inishmore (2001)

The insane leader of an INLA (Irish National Liberation Army) splinter group has just found out his best friend has been killed. The best friend is a cat... hilarity and/or violence ensues. Nominated for Tony Award for Best Play in 2006.

The Banshees of Inisheer

The finale of the Aran Islands trilogy. (unproduced and unpublished)

Other Plays

The Pillowman (2003)

A writer in a non-specified totalitarian state is interrogated over the content of several of his dark-as-night, Brothers Grimm-style short stories. At first assuming he is being questioned over a perceived political subtext in his writing, he comes to find out that there have been a series of local child murders that seem to have been inspired by a few of his gruesome and imaginative stories. To add fuel to the fire, if he cannot prove his innocence he will be executed at the end of the night. Awarded Laurence Olivier Award for Best new play in 2004 and nominated for Tony Award for Best Play in 2005.

Films

In 2006, Martin McDonagh won an Oscar for his short film Six Shooter.

Six Shooter, which is the playwright's first move into film, features Brendan Gleeson, Ruaidhri Conroy, David Wilmot and Aisling O'Sullivan. The black comedy follows Gleeson as he makes a sad train journey home, just hours after his wife's death, but on the trip he encounters a strange and possibly psychotic young man. The short film was shot on location in Wicklow, Waterford and Rosslare.

After winning his Oscar for Six Shooter, McDonagh entered into an agreement with Focus Features to direct a feature-length film from his screenplay In Bruges, about two hit men who hide out in Bruges after a job gone wrong. Colin Farrell, Ralph Fiennes, and Brendan Gleeson star in the film, released in the USA in 2008. The film was also the Opening Night film for the 2008 Sundance Festival and the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival.