Review - The Cripple of Inishmaan

When I was working for the pager company oh so many years ago, I made a bit of money there.  Plus I got sizable quarterly bonuses (gosh I miss those quarterly bonuses).  What did I use those sizable bonuses for?  Savings?  Retirement?  Oh no.  I bought subscriptions to most of the off-Broadway theater companies.  I will never learn.  Anyway, one of those theaters was the Public Theater.  And in one of my subscription series was a little dark Irish comedy called The Cripple of Inishmaan.  I didn't know anything about the writer or the play, but I remember loving that production.  I found it so funny and sad and touching and real.  I've had it in the back of my mind for all these years - when it was announced that Daniel Radcliffe would be headlining a revival, on Broadway no less, I was very excited.  Last night, a handsome chum very kindly invited me to be his guest to see the show.  I'm very grateful for handsome chums.

I'll just state up front: I maybe have the tiniest bit of a cougar-y crush on Daniel Radcliffe.  OK, I said it.  I just find him to be adorable in the extreme, plus I'm quite impressed with his dedication to craft and how serious he is about improving.  He seems to have a good head on his shoulders and he has a generous spirit that generally pervades the entire company of a show he's in.  You just feel the respect he has for the play and everyone around him and the respect the company has for him, which gives a production a happy glow, no matter what the situation.  I found him very affecting in Equus, he was a delight in How to Succeed, and I think he's giving a mature, soulful, pitch-perfect performance in Cripple of Inishmaan.  But, thankfully, he's not giving a star performance, he's part of an expert ensemble, for whom telling this story is paramount. 

The Cripple of Inishmaan is set in a remote area of Ireland, where everyone knows everyone else's business.  Everyone has a story and a past, and how they try to escape, or embrace, their fate is part of what plays out through the evening.  The plot gets moving when it's discovered a filmmaker is in the area, making a documentary about Ireland.  (One of the running jokes of the evening is when each characters utters a variation of "Well, Ireland MUST be great if [pick a race/animal/person/practically anything] comes here!")  Several characters believe this filmmaker is their way out of Ireland and to something better in America.  How they try to get to the filmmaker is what gets us on our way.

photo credit: Sara Krulwich

Radcliffe's Billy is a boy who has been disabled since birth and has been raised by two ladies he calls his 'aunties,' but who is desperate to know why his parents left him, why he's on this earth, and how can he exist where's he so different.  Radcliffe has quite an arc to play and he does it with lovely balance - he never overplays the pathos of his disability, yet he has a resilience and realism about his condition.  He wants more, but is pragmatic enough to realize he may have had what he wanted all along.  How his wants and desires meet up with his realities is what drives the fabric of the play.

The Cripple of Inishmaan is very funny, with quirky and outlandish characters who say bitingly wacky things, and are always completely real but also slightly off-kilter (as you can imagine desperately poor people who live so far from civilization could be); the play also has an undercurrent of melancholy and fear that is quite touching.  The entire cast is amazing and they work so well together as an ensemble, you really feel as if you're peeking into the lives of this town.  There's not a lot of plot here, but I enjoyed the ebbs and flows of these lives greatly.  The physical production is wonderful, with beautifully evocative sets, lights and music. 

I'll admit that part of me admires this play because it doesn't have the shocking violence of some of Martin McDonagh's other plays.  Shocking violence is generally not my cup of tea.  But that's not to say that Cripple of Inishmaan didn't have moments where my heart raced because I was afraid of what would happen next, or moments where man's cruelty to man broke my heart a little more and I was close to weeping.  But in this play, when characters get knocked down, they get back up.  Literally.  Whether they should or not.  That's one of the things that's so grand about this play - all of these characters could give in to sorrow and defeat, but they don't.  They keep moving, they keep dreaming, even in the face of mortality.  They have hope.  And I'm always all for hope.  So thumbs up from me.



photo credit: Sara Krulwich

And speaking of hope, I'm a lucky girl in that a generous Tony voter friend has invited me to be his guest at Cripple of Inishmaan next week.  I'm thrilled I'm going to get to see the show again.  I can't wait to watch it even more intently, see if I missed anything last night, and, most especially, it will be a thrill to spend time with these amazing actors and characters again.

UPDATE: It's come to my attention that I have perhaps been inconsistent with my not addressing the fact that Daniel Radcliffe is not disabled and he is playing a disabled character.  Yes, I suppose I have been.  Of course, I would hope that Radcliffe's understudy is an actor with a disability, though I can't imagine he is.  Unfortunately, Broadway is big business.  And for a revival of a small-scale Irish play to be done on Broadway, you have to have a star.  Bottom line.  I don't like it any more than you do - I would argue that putting a wonderful actor with a disability in the lead of a Broadway show would MAKE a star, but producers nowadays are loathe to do anything that doesn't practically guarantee they won't lose their shirts.  So, to get audiences to see this fine play, I have to swallow my disappointment and accept the fact that it wouldn't have been produced without Radcliffe.  But that doesn't negate my disappointment in a smaller company, where art might be more important than commerce, who won't make a statement, when they can, with their casting.  I don't think that's being hypocritical, at least I hope not.  I'll accept realistically inconsistent...