Los Angeles Times
- Recommended
"...This kind of theatrical blood sport won't be for everyone. (Pity the crew assigned to clean up the mess after each performance.) But if a flincher like me found himself tittering with open eyes, maybe you'll be tickled by McDonagh's malign mirth as well."
Backstage
- Highly Recommended
"...Pine gives a bravura lead performance, projecting a compelling amorality. The disparity between Pine's leading-man looks and boyish charm juxtaposed to Padraic's venal actions underline the ironies of McDonagh's loopy morality tale. Getzug and Griffin are superb as the bungling fools hoping to avoid Padraic's wrath, while Ryback excels at darkly funny line readings. Perry offers a sublime turn as the tough teenager with surprises up her sleeve. The three actors playing the pursuing terrorists lend first-rate support."
Talkin Broadway
- Recommended
"...There is much made of the amount of bloodshed in this play. Indeed, at the performance reviewed, one of the actors slid in the blood when coming out for the curtain call. But if you can handle the blood, The Lieutenant of Inishmore provides an evening of uproarious laughter- followed, perhaps, by some reflection over whether any of this is really funny at all."
Stage and Cinema
- Somewhat Recommended
"...It's harder to understand what has happened to The Lieutenant Of Inishmore. McDonagh is arguably one of the two or three most singular dramatic voices of the past decade and this play is, if not his best, as emblematic of his oeuvre as any other he has written. It might even be an authentic masterpiece. And yet what one senses here is just the opposite: inauthenticity. The cockeyed twisting of the Irish vernacular – like throwing Synge and O'Casey and a bunch of Barry Fitzgeralds into a sewer and watching them float amid the flotsam and jetsam of their language – is a source of rich laughter in itself. But it doesn't emanate from the ensemble, as it should, with comic musicality. The emphasis seems to be on the joke that emerges every minute or so in this production rather than on the music which remains, for the most part, locked inside the characters."
The Hollywood Reporter
- Highly Recommended
"...What's most remarkable about the writing is the way it captures in comic terms a particular kind of madness that has infected Ireland for most of the 20th century. There is great anger and sadness lying just beneath the savagery and peculiar sentimentality."
LA Splash
- Highly Recommended
"...the dialogue is impeccable. Here, spoken over some of the goriest, most atrociously violent scenes one will ever see on stage, is verbal candor cut with such precision that we helplessly await each line with an anticipatory smile for its delicious, biting Irish irony. Without so much as a single misplaced word, McDonagh makes rough-and-ready, profanity-infused Irish dialogue reveal its inherent genius for ironic, incisive humor. The tempo of this work is born from this dialogue; and the play itself ultimately requires nothing more than to be read aloud in order to be one of the funniest plays of our time."
StageHappenings.com
- Somewhat Recommended
"...The actions of the play get, "worse and worse", as one character screams to no effect. But this play, with its brilliant dialogue and superb acting and direction, goes so far over the top that by its conclusion, I am completely lost-I have become uninvolved and can no longer care what happens to anyone on the stage. With all sense of the believable gone, the play descends into slapstick and sketch comedy. Perhaps an abrupt turn toward seriousness toward the end might have allowed for some deeper thought and realization. After all, the heroine does say, although nonchalantly, that killing a lot of men wasn't as much fun as she had thought it would be. The father's last line, "enough killing done," was not set up properly to have weight."
ReviewPlays.com
- Highly Recommended
"..."The Lieutenant of Inishmore" is a guilty pleasure. You can't believe you're laughing at it even while you're shuddering at all the blood and gore. Perhaps the laughs come as a result of the tight direction of Wilson Milam, who keeps the ensemble to its impeccable timing---hysteria moderated by long Pinteresque pauses. Milam has directed this production since its first performance by the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford-upon-Avon in 2001 and its subsequent performances in New York."
Examiner
- Highly Recommended
"...If blood and curse words offend you, you'll want to stay clear of Martin McDonagh's "The Lieutenant of Inishmore" now playing at the Mark Taper Forum in downtown Los Angeles. The officer is not a gentleman, at least not in the sense recognized by the U.S. military or the Geneva Convention. We're talking about an Irish lad who's "too mad" for the IRA."
CurtainUp
- Highly Recommended
"...McDonagh's world is an Ireland where the gun conveys stature. His people are nasty, brutish and short and he pokes fun at them with devilish zest. It adds up to a play that's hilarious, gory, ghoulish and bizarre. I loved it!"
Campus Circle
- Highly Recommended
"...Don't be surprised if a few of your fellow theatergoers march out of "The Lieutenant of Inishmore" in a huff halfway through the final act. This isn't a play for the faint of heart, and director Wilson Milam goes, quite literally, for the jugular, creating a spectacle that's haunting, hilarious and deeply disturbing. For those who chose to turn tail and abandon the show as it reaches its climax, count it as their loss because the play is one of the best shows to grace the Mark Taper Forum's stage in recent memory."
Broadway World
- Highly Recommended
"...All the production credits are exemplary, with notable mentions to Director Wilson Milam (who also directed the original Broadway production) for skillfully propelling the action at breakneck speed, set designer Laura Fine Hawkes for keeping everyone off-balance with her multi-layerEd Stone set and Waldo Warshaw and Matthew W. Mungle for the special effects which are too good to reveal here!"
