Thursday 21st to Saturday 23rd and Tuesday 26th to Saturday 30th July 2005
Directed by Jacquie Penrose
A small island community in the west of Ireland is stirred from its habits by the arrival in 1934 of a Hollywood film crew, making a documentary about the life of the islands. Billy, the ‘cripple’ of the title, wants more than any to make his escape.
This lyrical, absorbing play - a major success at the National Theatre in 1996 - reflects with great humanity the humour and cruelty brought about by a life of isolation, ignorance, prejudice and boredom.
Set on a remote island off the west coast of Ireland in 1934, this is a strange and blackly comic tale. As word arrives on Inishmaan that a Hollywood director is coming to the neighbouring island of Inishmore to film Man of Aran, the one person who wants above all others to be in the film is young Cripple Billy. Billy is played by Luke Smith who himself has a physical disability.
The humour hovers on farce, playing with a deliberate music-hall view of Ireland and the Irish, yet underlying this is a bleaker and more violent reality: as Billy says at one point, ‘there are plenty round here just as crippled as me, only it isn’t on the outside it shows.’
| Billy | Luke Smith |
| Bartley | Martin McBride |
| Helen | Alice Corrigan |
| Eileen | Ingrid Corrigan |
| Kate | Nicola Scadding |
| Bobby | Nathan Chapman |
| Johnny | Peter Corrigan |
| Doctor | John Scadding |
| Manny | Sue Dawes |
| Director | Jacquie Penrose |
| Producer |
Waves lapping at the shore of the remote Irish island of Inishmaan set the rhythm of Martin McDonagh's play and Bench Theatre's production.
Director Jacquie Penrose recognises that this blend of Irish whimsy and sharp social criticism cannot be hurried. The result is that it is equally funny and shocking.
The play focuses on "cripple Billy', who is seduced by a Hollywood film crew's arrival into trying to escape the prison in which his disability places him.
It is a prison partly created in his own mind by the mystery of his past, partly imposed by the casual cruelty to which he is exposed through the islanders' prejudice and boredom.
All these facts are developed in a poignant performance by Luke Smith - and counterpointed effectively by three members of the Corrigan family in particular.
Peter Corrigan is gloriously bluff as a newshound who cannot ask a direct question. Ingrid C turns vexation into a fine art as one of Billy's unofficial aunts. And Alice C makes vicious child Helen all the more horrifying by giving her a sweet smile and deadpan delivery.
But the cast has no serious weaknesses - an event whose regularity explains why Bench is at the forefront of amateur theatre in south-east Hampshire.
Mike Allen, The News. Saturday 23rd July