First, there's Padraic, an Irish "freedom fighter" whose tactics are so brutally implemented that even the IRA rejected him—but whose most terrible revenge is reserved for the assassin sending his beloved pet cat to its untimely end. This is Christy, leader of a rival self-styled patriot band likewise indifferent to human slaughter, albeit uneasy with the notion of cruelty to animals. Then there's teenage Mairead, who's trained herself in BB-gun marksmanship so that she can now shoot out the eyes of both man and beast at 60 yards—and who also dotes upon her feline companion.
How better to illustrate the folly of civil terrorism than in cartoon-sized images grounded in a ridiculous premise? Martin McDonagh has taken the comedy-of-violence genre further than any playwright since Joe Orton. Before we are done in The Lieutenant of Inishmore, we will witness free-fire shootouts, five-way standoffs, close-up execution-style gunfire, captives hung by their heels, severed body parts, bloody kitty cadavers and flying gore by the gallon.
The dubious voices of reason amid this civil chaos are Donny and Davey, Padraic's weary dad and Mairead's wimpy brother, respectively—both of whom have come to accept the social disorder as part of their country's national character. Assigned the task of dismembering several dead rebels for burial ("Them corpses won't be chopping themselves up, will they?"), Donny grumbles, "It's incidents like this that put tourists off Ireland."
The cozy dimensions of the Raven West Stage facilitates the looney-tunes pace sustained by AstonRep Theater's ensemble for its play's 90-minute duration.
What prevents it spinning out of control under the swift exchange of adrenaline is director Derek Bertelsen's awareness that the absurdity of McDonagh's dramatic universe—did I mention the internal dissension over Cromwell's genocidal campaign against Irish tabbies and toms?—is best served by contrasting its casual thuggery with its reverence for the cuddly childhood comrades that constitute its sole acknowledged innocents.
John Wehrman, Robert Tobin and Nora Lise Ulrey deliver performances steeped in amoral anarchy, while Scott Olson and Matthew Harris deflate their posturing with impeccable tag-team timing. Jeremiah Barr's ingenious property design keeps the Tarantino-esque spectacle within the boundaries of audience tolerance (barely), as does Ray Kasper's precision-foleyed gunfire. After all this messy misanthropy, the collective sigh of relief that arises in the final moments when a four-footed actor listed in the playbill only as "Widget" makes his belated appearance is as palpable as it is welcome.
