A Skull in Connemara at Riverside Studios

Making up the Madness series at Riverside Studios along with productions of Macbeth and Ajax, author Martin McDonagh might be feeling a little uneasy about keeping the same company as theatrical giants Shakespeare and Sophocles.

However, the madness in McDonagh’s piece is not the same as Macbeth’s lust for power or Ajax’s self-pity and jealousy of others. The cause of the mental disruption is a guilt felt by Mick Dowd, an Irish gravedigger, over the role he had in his wife’s death seven years ago.

What is troubling him is that he cannot remember what happened as a result of his alcoholism. Drink makes up a large part of the play’s action. There is hardly a scene that goes by without someone ingesting some amount of poitin, a spirit made from fermented potatoes. Drunk in the morning, drunk in the evening and in overly prescribed amounts, most of the characters find themselves lost in some kind of stupor.

When he is required to dig up his wife’s bones, all the doubts and anguish return, along with rumours and hearsay from fellow villagers that foul play was involved rather than drink-driving. These are conveyed by young whippersnapper Mairtin Hanlon and his police officer brother Thomas. A grim discovery at the local graveyard only increases the aspersions being cast.

Whilst an amiable and often amusing play, it is hard to see why this fits into a season on madness. Whilst Macbeth is driven insane over what he has done in order to become king, Mick is not really mad. He is a man simply troubled by his past. If he is beset by the anguish of not being able to truly know what happened on the night of his wife’s death, the play does not explore it to any kind of satisfying degree. As a result, there is little substance. This gives a very slow-paced play too much of little consequence and not enough psychological exploration.

A lot of the action is merely played for laughs and even though McDonagh is able to pull off quite a macabre humour, it does result in a little emptiness once the laughter has died away. This is not to say that the production does not have its merits. The acting is of a good standard and makes the action skip along at a lively pace. It would have been welcome to see Dan Mullane given something more profound to explore as he performs excellently as the haggard gravedigger weighed down by his past. As it is, the character merely rumbles on, content at not having to trawl the recesses of his foggy memory.

A Skull in Connemara is at the Riverside Studios until July 26.

Riverside Studios
Crisp Road
Hammersmith
W6 9RL

Box office: 0208 237 1111

www.riversidestudios.co.uk