McDonagh scripts their savage and macabre verbal sparring. Director Mark A. Rhea paces each round with knockout punch. Keenan and Smith play high-risk foils as if on a high-tension high wire. And Casey Kaleba tightly stages each fight with a startling mix of hostility and silliness … The Lonesome West is a fantastic ride.
Director Mark A. Rhea knows what he wants to do with The Lonesome West. He’s got hip contemporary music, dancing scene changers that give the audience a show, and the occasional voice-over to punctuate proceedings.
This production, directed by Mark A. Rhea, the Keegan’s founder, leaves nothing whatsoever to be desired. It’s serious when it needs to be and funny the rest of the time, and the members of the cast make music out of Mr. McDonagh’s raucous dialogue. This staging was as convincing as anything I’ve seen at New York’s Irish Repertory Theatre.
Never underestimate the power of tonal contrast. Much of Martin McDonagh’s black comedy “The Lonesome West” depicts the simmering hostility between two Irish brothers: Coleman and Valene Connor have long indulged in outrages that include threats, blackmail, violent brawling, streams of profanity and the malicious mistreatment of potato chips. It’s misbehavior rendered amusingly in the Keegan Theatre’s lively staging of the play.
Do not miss Keegan Theatre’s scintillating and thrilling production of The Lonesome West!. The Keegan Theatre has produced an emotional, subversive, and darkly comic masterpiece!
The Keegan Theatre closes out its record-breaking 19th season with Martin McDonagh’s brutally funny dark comedy, THE LONESOME WEST. Set in the tiny Irish backwater of Leenane, warring brothers Valene and Coleman live to torment each other, baiting and brawling over every petty grievance, from would-be girlfriends to cheap potato chips. Only Father Welsh, the local parish priest, will try to save them before their sibling rivalry explodes into a hilarious and brutal finish.
…A Behanding played well before a potentially critical younger crowd as well as the Boomers that filled out the audience. That’s something to laugh about and applaud.
Go see this guilty pleasure. On one hand, there are a mountain of laughs, and on the other hand…oh wait…there is only one hand.
…the explosive bursts of humor, the macabre nature of the plot, and the terrific character-driven performances make Keegan Theatre’s production of A Behanding in Spokane one of the most memorable and entertaining plays of the season.
Playwright Martin McDonagh succeeds in writing, and the actors in Keegan Theatre’s cast succeed in delivering, wonderfully fluent and intelligently-written lines for the four characters in A Behanding in Spokane…
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