AT EACH OTHERS’ THROATS: The AIRE cast of The Lonesome West. |
As kids, Irish brothers Valene and Coleman (Paul Haley and Tony Reilly) waged war on each other with spittle, boots to the head, and sly sabotage of each other’s romantic prospects. Now grown men, they’ve added a shotgun to the mix, but the spirit of adolescence still endure. Valene won’t share his booze or his crisps, and labels everything else that’s off-limits to Coleman with a “V” of black tape. Coleman, for his part, creatively desecrates Valene’s collection of saint figurines. Even as their neighbors mourn the brothers’ newly dead father, fastidious Valene and louche Coleman go at each other with helpless relish in Martin McDonagh’s black comic drama, The Lonesome West. Under Tony Reilly’s direction, the American Irish Repertory Ensemble makes rich, wicked, and poignant work of the brothers’ murderous one-upmanship.
Valene and Coleman’s bent for mutually assured destruction may owe something to environment: Lonesome is the third in a trilogy of plays set in Leenane, a western Ireland town rife with grit, id, and poteen, the clear potato moonshine that fuels it all. Poor Father Welsh (Mark Rubin, resonant and tragic), the alcoholic parish priest, laments that “God has no jurisdiction in this town,” and murder, suicide, and general depravity are indeed rampant. He’s distressed, for example, that the very pretty, very savvy schoolgirl Girleen (the marvelous Casey Turner, in red leather and a plaid micro-skirt), is the town’s main poteen peddler. And he’s despondent about Valene and Coleman’s vicious bickering, which tweaks his faith on a daily basis.
As the fratricidal odd couple, Reilly and Haley perform some of the fullest, funniest, and most devastating character work of recent memory. Just for starters, they look phenomenal. The swaggering, fleshier Reilly sports a duck’s ass, handlebars, and a paisley shirt open to the chest. Skinny Haley’s pinched, priggish Valene, on the other hand, buttons every button under his sweater vest. On top of that, their physical antics are deliciously intricate. Lips tight, Haley’s Valene seals his precious poteen pint into a cookie tin (so he can tell if Coleman sneaks any): He secures the packing tape with quick, fussy jerks of his hands, then gives the lid a tidy, sanctimonious knock. Reilly, on the other hand, is almost obscenely loose; he sprawls in his armchair with one leg wide over the arm. To watch him flip open a switch-comb and fondle his duck’s ass is to witness something positively dirty.
But even more impressive, and vital to the play’s impact, are the rarer flares of real pathos — hurt, hope, concession — that sometimes burn through both brothers’ comedic bravado. In Haley’s case, this show draws the greatest emotional range and nuance that I’ve seen from him, and his work represents an affecting achievement.
For those that like their theater dark, witty, and dirty, this show is manna — thick with abhorrent deeds, gunshots, chokeholds, and flying scraps of sausage rolls. As Coleman and Valene do increasingly outrageous battle, they reveal progressively horrific secrets of their adult life, and they rehash all the pissed-in drinks and spat spittle of their childhood.
