the appeal of hope in McDonagh’s leenane trilogy
It was natural to devour Martin McDonagh’s Leenane trilogy on one lovely evening since the lockdown deprived many of us of some serious theatre action. McDonagh’s trilogy is comprised of The Beauty Queen of Leenane (1996), A Skull in Connemara (1997), and The Lonesome West (1997). The Beauty Queen of Leenane won a Tony Award for Best Play while the New York Times described the work as “stunning” and hailed the playwright as having a “master’s hand at building up and subverting expectations in a cat-and-mouse game with the audience.” On being asked about the effects of his Leenane trilogy success, McDonagh replied, “It’s been […] crazy.” On one level, his response is quite illuminating. In fact, it seems to echo much of what I thought of his plays. They are crazy. The trilogy includes just as many physical actions as there are dialogues. The trilogy observes the lives of several characters uniting them in time and place; while the unfolding of the past and discovering of the future in the small county of Galway becomes the site of conflict.
This truncation is only one of the ways in which McDonagh’s trilogy creates a sense of dramatic construction. The plays also balance reversal, climactic order, and circularity — and the adept handling of these elements helps to explain why, despite the violence and eerie bloodshed, readers often seek hope after reading his trilogy. Through his characters, McDonagh portrays the complexity of the human condition by coalescing the grotesque and compassion of human life to highlight the ways in which the readers invest their sympathy in the protagonists (Maureen, Mick Dowd, and Father Welsh).
Two strong-willed women drive the plot of The Beauty Queen of Leenane. Maureen Folan, a forty-year-old virgin, and Mag Folan, Maureen’s tyrannical, seventy-year-old mother. In their rural cottage in Leenane, Maureen and Mag display an unhealthy and destructive relationship. In scene one, we learn that Maureen has been Mag’s sole caregiver for the last twenty years. Mag evokes a selfish and zealous concern for herself often neglecting Maureen’s own interest in living her own life. Mag, in her endless list of demands, depends on Maureen from making her Complan and porridge to turning down the radio, as it is “a biteen loud.” The treatment is reciprocal, however. Trapped in the caregiver role, Maureen expects to take care of her mother “from now and ’til doomsday.” With deep resentment of her situation, Maureen replies to her mother with insults (“You’re oul and you’re stupid and you don’t know what you’re talking about”), threats, and physical abuse. By the end of scene one, the reader shares the ominous chord of Maureen’s desire to meet the “fella” that “murdered [a] poor oul woman in Dublin.”
The struggle between codependence and independence ripples throughout the play. In scene two, Ray Dooley (Pato’s younger brother) arrives at the Folan’s house with an invitation to a party. Finding Mag alone, Ray decides to jot down the information for Maureen on a piece of paper in order to avoid “talking with a loon.” Shortly after Ray leaves, Mag quickly burns the invitation. The gesture reveals Mag’s impulse to stop anything or anyone that may result in Maureen’s leave. Certainly, Mag’s anxiety precipitates into another battle between the mother and daughter as Maureen, in scene two, catches her mother in a lie:
Maureen (knowing): Oh, did Ray Dooley pass, now?
Mag: He passed, aye, and said hello as he was passing.
Maureen: I thought just now you said there was no visitors.
[Dialogue after Maureen orders Mag to drink the lumpy Complan]
Maureen: Drink ahead, I said! You had room enough to be spouting your lies about Ray Dooley had no message! […] The lies of you.
Prompted by a single, selfish motive, Mag’s fear of “who’ll look after [her]” leads her to cunningly control Maureen’s life. At this point, our sympathy belongs to Maureen as we read her live her life feeling entrapped in Mag’s incessant need for her daughter. It is as Nicholas Grene described as being “denied the chance of escaping from the incestuous awfulness of Leenane.” [1] Yet, the aroused sympathy scene one and two has created quickly turns ambiguous as we discover the physical violence that culminates for the rest of the play to Maureen’s actual murder of her mother.
Maureen’s one-night stand with Pato Dooley seems to act as the catalyst for the final destruction of the mother/daughter relationship. When Mag finds Pato in her home, she is “dumbfounded” and “startled.” In fact, Pato must address the elephant in the room in order to put Mag at ease: “I was all for creeping out before ever you got yourself up, but Maureen said ‘Aren’t we all adults, now? What harm?’ I suppose we are, but…I don’t know it’s still awkward […].” Following the scene is Mag’s attempt to embarrass Maureen in front of Pato to make the her undesirable to him. Mag elaborates on Maureen’s violent past as in scalding her mother’s hand (which by the end of the play, the reader can assume that is true) and her associations with Difford Hall, a “nut-house.” Mag’s attempt to dissuade the suitor from taking Maureen away is, again, her fear of being abandoned, just as her two daughters have abandoned her. This scene, then, sets up the heinous murder scene of Mag.
When Maureen discovered how Mag destroyed Pato’s letter, which details Pato’s desire to be with Maureen and live in America, she immediately practices a series of grotesque physical and verbal harm to her mother. Maureen “holds down [Mag’s] hand on the burning range, and starts slowly pouring some the hot oil over it.” As the physical torture continues, Mag can only respond with screams, cries, and whimpers. Mag’s fear of Maureen leaving her comes close to reality. The stark juxtaposition of Maureen’s new, found hope (“He asked me to go to America with him? Pato asked me to go to America with him?”) and Mag’s fear of Maureen abandoning her (“But how could you go with him? You do still have me to look after.”), highlights the final destruction of the mother/daughter relationship as Maureen, coming home from “seeing” Pato, discovers Mag’s dead body. Her reply, “Twas over the stile she did trip. Aye. And down the hill she did fall. Aye.” In this horrific scene, the reader is traumatized. The reader asks is my sympathy for her justified?
Yet, in creating a violent, almost hard-to-read scene, McDonagh critiques the human condition. The stark contrast of hope (Maureen’s discovery of Pato’s initial desire to be with her) and despair (Mag’s undying dependence on her daughter) reveals the complexity that perpetuates the harsher realities of self-agency, self-desire, and responsibility to others. We may fault Maureen for her unforgiving murder of her mother, but we cannot fault her in desiring to have happiness. Her sacrifice for her mother ultimately boils down to, “still, I’m not appreciated.” This desire to be appreciated and to be happy — even if it is only through the narratives she imagines (meeting the “fella” that “murdered [a] poor oul woman in Dublin” and “No grudges. […] I did get what I did want out of Pato Dooley that night.”) echoes that of Synge’s Christy Mahon in his desire to be someone or somewhere different [2]. Yet, unlike Christy, who wants to reinvent himself through storytelling, Maureen simply attempts to reinsert herself into the controlling narratives of her life in the hopes that Pato will become her lover and that it would be on her own terms should he decide not to be with her. Mag, therefore, represents the only element that hinders Maureen from instantiating a verbal-made-up relationship with Pato that sustain her. As we later discover that Maureen has become the “exact fecking image of [her] mother […], sitting there pegging orders and forgetting [names],” we cannot help but sympathize for her loss — in the form of Pato, her mother, and finally, her sanity.
The effect of hope in the form of sympathy is again evoked in the second play of the trilogy, A Skull in Connemara. The play revolves around a graveyard digger named Mick Dowd whose wife, Oona, died seven years ago. Scene one sets up a sense of mystery, as Oona’s cause of death remains unclear. As Mick has been ordered to dig up remains from the church graveyard (where Oona is buried) to make room for the newly dead, Mary and Mairtin inform Mick of the “aspersions” surrounding the death of Oona. Both assume that Mick killed his wife before the staged car accident scene, declaring that the “wife-butcherer” would “probably crack her head in two, so he would.” In his defense, Mick expounds on the event of his wife’s death: “[…] I had a drink taken, and a good drink, and that she had no seat-belt on her, and that was the end of it. No other aspersion could there be.” Scene one remains crucial as the fight between Mick and Mairtin reveals the sensitivity of the issue. Unlike, The Beauty Queen of Leenane in which Maureen’s detrimental relationship with her mother is revealed, McDonagh only exposes the mystery surrounding Oona’s death and the possibility that Mick, indeed, killed his wife. Scene two further illuminates the mystery. On the day Mick opens her grave the coffin is empty. “She’s not there,” he says dumbfounded. We learn later on that Thomas Hanlon, a local police officer, and his brother, Mairtin, have taken the bones. Thomas, whose aspirations to become a detective, yearns to uncover the mystery of Oona’s death, as he believes that Mick is guilty of killing his wife. He exclaims, “[M]aybe your wife’s head injuries all those years ago weren’t especially conducive to only having been in a car crash at all, and maybe […] she was already dead before you drove her into the wall […].”
The insinuation of Mick’s guilty doing undulates throughout the play. Thomas, Mairtin, and Mary eventually force Mick to lose his patience that upon learning Thomas and Mairtin’s terrible deed of stealing his wife’s bone reenacts his wife’s death:
Mairtin: [The] morbid oul fecks. And not only stealing your missus then, if that weren’t enough, but to go pinching the locket that lay round her neck too, a locket that wouldn’t fetch you a pound in the Galway pawn, I’d bet.
Mick: The rose locket, was it?
Mairtin: The rose locket, aye, with the picture of you […].
[dialogue after Mick announces that Mairtin can drive the truck drunk]
Mairtin: I’m not near the limit, sure. I’ve had a bare sip. Oh let me be driving, Mick. Please now. Pause. Mick takes his car keys out of his pocket and tosses them to Mairtin.
What comes next is Mick’s eerie exit to follow Mairtin with the future murder weapon, the mallet. This scene stands crucial as it becomes the physical manifestation of the alleged murder of Mick’s wife. Just as Maureen has become the “same fecking image” of her mother, so has Mairtin in symbolizing Mick’s wife. The only problem is we cannot fully confide in Mick’s attempted murder of Mairtin as evidence of Mick killing his wife. To do so only implies the reader’s interest in believing that Mick is indeed is guilty of the crime.
At his entrance in the next and final scene, Mick wears a bloody shirt and proudly confesses through a written note that he has killed Mairtin. As Thomas attacks Mick, Mairtin drunkenly stumbles in the house declaring, “A pure drink-driving is all this was. What would Mick want to go malleting my poor brains for? Mick likes me an awful lot, don’t you, Mick?” Mick quickly burns his confession. By the end of the play, the persistent circulation of Mick’s alleged crime eventually manifests into something real. McDonagh creates a tension between myth and reality and subjects his reader/viewer to the same ambiguity as we were at the beginning of the play. This climactic order of knowing his wife’s death and the mystery clouding the cause of her death are where the source of sympathy roots from. There were many moments that could have potentially thrown Mick over the edge and kill Mairtin or Thomas; yet, it is only when Mairtin confesses of their unforgiving deed of stealing Mick’s wife (or at least, her bones) that sets Mick to attempt to murder Mairtin. This would not be premeditated murder, but voluntary manslaughter. It is a “Heat of Passion” murder as Mick had no prior intent to kill Mairtin. In this context, the final scene in which Mick is alone on stage cement the feeling of ambiguity we feel for Mick. As he caresses his wife’s skull and swears “[he] didn’t touch her,” the reader is uncertain of how to define what they feel for Mick. On one level, the conclusion is purely sentimental. McDonagh exposes the uncertainty of Mick’s alleged crime as the climactic order of the narrative leaves us questioning what is real and what is not. McDonagh inevitably parallels Mick’s sanity with Maureen’s descent into madness as the only element he can truly cling onto is his narrative of “I didn’t touch her.”
Just as Maureen and Mick have absorbed “[the] culmination of the tradition of Irish play about […] conflict, as Grene says, so too, has Father Welsh in The Lonesome West. The play introduces the reader to two characters: Coleman Connor and Valene Connor. The middle-aged brothers are portrayed as immature. Topics of booze, their dead dog Lassie, Valene’s stove, and killing each other occupy much of their daily lives. But the “crux of the matter” is Father Welsh’s heartfelt concern for the lives of Coleman and Valene, “both in this world and the next.” In scene three, after “dragging poor Tom’s body home,”Valene and Father Welsh are confronted with “the searing heat from the stove [which] burns [Valene’s] hands.” Valene, “stunned,” learns that Coleman has burned all his figurines in retaliation to their earlier quarrel. What comes next is a series of “I’ll kill the feck! I’ll kill the feck!” Ultimately, Valene exposes Coleman’s crime — murdering his own Father. In a sweep of rage, Valene declares:
Valene: Me own flesh and blood is right, and why not? If he’s allowed to murder his own flesh and blood and get away with it, why shouldn’t I be?
Welsh: What are you talking about, now? Coleman shooting your dad was a pure accident and you know well.
Valene: A pure accident me arse! You’re the only fecker in Leenane believes that shooting was an accident. Didn’t Dad make a jibe about Coleman’s hairstyle, and didn’t Coleman dash out, pull back be the hair and blow the poor skulleen out his head, the same as he’d been promising to do since the age of eight and Da trod on his Scaletrix, broke in two…
Coleman: well I did love that Scaletrix. It had glow in the dark headlamps.
Father Welsh: It can’t be true! It can’t be true!
This scene is crucial as it unveils both Father Welsh’s shock and the brothers’ normalization of Leenane murders. Father Welsh is traumatized not merely because of the radical de-sublimation involved in his shifting perspective of “flesh and blood” killing each other. Perhaps, more critically, the brute fact of the brother’s unnerving confession of killing their father threatens to destroy the symbolic order around which his religion idealizes: “murdering someone, in fact [is] the worst cause.” Father Welsh is simply astounded by this discovery that he later commits suicide. Sending a letter to the brothers, Welsh confesses: “All I want to do is be pleading with you as a fella concerned about ye and yer lives.” Father Welsh justifies his suicide as an action that will help “restore […] the love [between] the brothers [they] do woefully lack.” He believes that the brothers’ existence is of “sadness and lonesome.” To Welsh, the only solution is to go to Purgatory. It is, indeed, as if McDonagh evoked the passage in Purgatory where Yeats’s Old Man stands outside the ruins of the burned house and recalls its occupants — his mother and father. A similar lament is manifested by Father Welsh’s desire to save the brothers. As a result, the reader must sympathize with Father Welsh.
McDonagh’s choice of how to evoke this lament is intriguing. By developing a character that represents a person who is supposed to follow his religious law and ironically, betrays it to save the relationship and “restore” the love of two brothers, the playwright presents us with a complex character. The reader is led to ask: can we condemn Father Welsh? Would God condemn Father Welsh? Like Maureen and Mick, Father Welsh’s character comes into some remarkable self-knowledge. Maureen must become her mother. Mick must confront his wife’s cracked skull. And Father Welsh must betray his religious law in order to restore the love between the Connor brothers.
McDonagh’s Leenane trilogy has been equated to Quentin Tarantino’s films in which the theme of violence has overshadowed the complexity of McDonagh’s characters. Yes, the playwright has a gift of portraying the brutality of the human condition. His unrelenting grotesque portrayals of death (scalding hands with hot oil, smashing skulls, and drowning) are the stuff horror and action films are made of. Maureen, Mick, and Father Welsh are spared no mercy as they journey through the atrocious and stark reality of their modern-day Leenane. Yet, in the midst of all the horror and bloodshed Leenane's trilogy portrays is the difficulty of neatly classifying the protagonists as wrongdoers, evil, and naïve. This is a credit to McDonagh’s skill in drawing his characters as complex human beings that readers can both dislike and sympathize with.
Perhaps, more critically, is the understanding the readers is asked to make when reading these characters. Maureen’s desire to live her own life is justified by her individuality, yet hindered by her mother’s dependence. As a result, she must live, like Mick and Father Welsh (should the brothers become incapable of saving his soul), lonesome. Mick’s dead wife and the “casting aspersions” surrounding his potential crime must haunt him and become part of his reality. The ambiguity of Father Welsh’s self-sacrificial action and whether his soul will be saved will remain that — ambiguous. Through the reversal, climactic order, and circularity that McDonagh establishes in his trilogy, the reader can glean some sort of hope. While some may argue that McDonagh provides neither a means of escape nor hope for these characters’ future, it becomes clear that while there is no hope for these characters, the younger generation may have one. McDonagh seems to imply this through Girleen, the youngest character in his trilogy when she declares:
Girleen: […] even if you’re sad or something, or lonely or something, you’re still better off than them lost in the ground or in the lake, because…at least you’ve got the chance of being happy, and even if it’s a real little chance, it’s more than them dead ones have. And it’s not that you’re saying ‘hah, I’m better than ye’ […] at least when you’re still here there’s the possibility of happiness.
If the appeal of hope does not reside in the protagonists, then it certainly must reside in the reader. Otherwise, McDonagh’s sentiment of the “possibility of happiness” stands as an anomaly rather than a cohesive theme structured in his plays. We may not get the happy ending we idealize, but we certainly have the opportunity to imagine its possibility.
[1] Grene, Nicholas. “Ireland in Two Minds: Martin McDonagh and Conor Mcpherson.” The Yearbook of English Studies. 35 (2005): 298–311. Print.
[2] Harrington, John P. Modern, and Contemporary Irish Drama: Backgrounds and Criticism, 112. New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 2009. Print.
