Description: A Student Edition of McDonagh's dramatic engagement with Republican paramilitaries, first produced by the RSC in 2000.
Brief description: Patrick Lonergan is Professor of Drama and Theatre Studies at University of Galway, Ireland.
Review Quotes:
"Gleeful, gruesome play about political terrorism in rural Ireland, which won the Olivier Award for best comedy...Appallingly entertaining...Enlightening...Lieutenant is brazenly and unapologetically a farce. But it is also a severely moral play, translating into dizzy absurdism the self-perpetuating spirals of political violence that now occur throughout the world." --The New York Times
"A cautionary fairy tale for our toxic times. In its horror and hilarity, it works as an act of both revenge and repair, turning the tables on grief and goonery, and forcing the audience to think about the unthinkable." --The New Yorker "There's more than one way to skin a theatrical cat; and McDonagh's chosen weapons are laughter and gore Pushing theatre to its limits, McDonagh is making a serious point a work as subversive as those Synge and O'Casey plays that sparked Dublin riots in the last century." --Guardian "A brave satire Swiftianly savage and parodic with explicit brutal actino and lines which sing with grace and wit." --Observer