A Skull in Connemara

Oldham Coliseum

Written by Martin McDonagh

Directed by Chris Lawson

A Skull in Connemara is a fine example of Martin McDonagh’s use of gallows humour to portray the brutal realities in small town life. He has an uncanny flair for making the ordinary seem extraordinary by placing vivid characters in subversive situations to create unnerving dramas that absorb and captivate. First shown in Galway in 1997, this new production directed by Chris Lawson is a deeply satisfying watch and is beautifully staged.

There are four characters on stage each one vividly brought to life by a very strong cast, and then of course there are all the additional characters invoked by their skulls with each one telling their own story. This is a small rural community where fact and fiction are often blurred and never get in the way of a good story. Everything about this production looks and feels and sounds authentic. Having myself grown up in a rural part of Ireland the characters are instantly recognisable as are the bleak tales of deaths caused by alcoholism or from farming accidents with slurry tanks and combine harvesters.

This is a world where 5 year olds are not easily forgiven for peeing in the cemetery and are described by Maryjohnny as a pack of whores clearly destined to burn in hell as she happily sups poteen and shares the comfort of a peat fire with a man who she believes has murdered his wife. Such are the constant disparities in this piece which deftly throws curve balls at the audience with the same regularity that Mick digs up corpses.

John O’Dowd is perfectly cast as the tightly coiled, inscrutable widower Mick who is tasked with the ghastly task of digging up his own wife. Impossible to pin down what he truly thinks or feels, he allows the other characters the space to relax and reveal their own truths. The interplay between him and the naive, younger men still grappling for excitement and validation is beautifully played out. The genius moment perhaps being the skull battery scene played out over a soundtrack of Dana singing All Kinds of Everything only matched in film terms by Tarantino’s ear scene in Reservoir Dogs.

Katie Scott who recently did such a clever job with the set design on Sparkplug has perfectly captured an old Irish kitchen complete with distempered walls an peat fire. The trapdoors and mounds of dark earth make this graveyard eerily real as the spade thuds down on decaying coffins. The scene shifts between kitchen and ghostly graveyard with lopsided Celtic gravestones is startling and truly beautiful.

This is fabulous story telling with a rich, meaty dialogue filled with Irish profanities and colloquialisms. Directed with a real understanding of McDonagh’s work this is an assured production that can charm and repel in equal measure but will always enthrall.

Oldham Coliseum 22nd February – 9thMarch 2019

Images by Joel Chester Fildes