Vow of poverty

The Cherry Orchard
Old Vic

A Skull in Connemara
Riverside

At the Riverside there’s a revival of a 1997 play that shows rural Ireland as the home of traditional country relaxations: theft, heavy drinking, revenge and murder. Martin McDonagh’s macabre little masterpiece, A Skull in Connemara, is set in a remote village and it shows us the Emerald Isle minus the tourist-board platitudes and gaieties. The cheery, Guinness-drinking peat-cutters singing ‘She Moved Through The Fair’ by the pub fireside are replaced with a population of shifty, small-time criminals running illegal stills and swindling ‘eejit Yanks’ with fake relics. ‘Maureen O’Hara drank from this mug.’

The village has a big problem. Its overcrowded graveyard has to be cleared of corpses every seven years to make space for new occupants. The chief skull-digger, Mick Dowd, is forced to confront his past when he exhumes the corpse of his late wife whose death has been gossiped about for years. Was she killed in a road-crash or did Mick cudgel her brains out while high on moonshine? Even he isn’t certain. The local copper, desperate to earn promotion by solving the mystery, doesn’t balk at doctoring the evidence.

McDonagh disposes the elements of his play with a beautiful intricacy and his banter is bang up to date. ‘There’s nothing wrong with lesbians,’ says Mick. ‘They’re not doing anybody any harm. And they’re great tennis players.’ Dan Mullane is brimful of charisma as the delusional drink-fuddled widower, and Iarla McGowan, as his friend-turned-avenger, gets just the right mix of creepiness and petty-minded menace. Director Catriona Craig has marshalled a scruffily energetic production and though it may not win prizes — certainly not from Discover Ireland — it’s a richly rewarding night out.