The Cripple of Inishmaan

McDonagh's play wittily exposes the multiple layers of myth that surround Ireland. -- Michael Billington * Guardian *
McDonagh is a writer with a gift for scorching entertainment. -- Henry Hitchings * London Evening Standard *
McDonagh is a master technician -- he can whip up larger-than-life yet convincing characters and situations faster than any of his peers...he's expert at creating laugh-aloud comedy out of private cruelty. But if, to put it mildly, compassion has never been his strong suit, this is his play which most elicits genuine empathy. -- David Benedict * Variety *
Written with verbal brio and gleefully scant regard for sensitivities -- Sarah Hemming * Financial Times *
McDonagh - with his mastery of caustic dialogue - has drawn such weird, funny characters ... that this black comedy comes across as strangely celebratory of rural misery. * Time Out *
McDonagh refuses to romanticise ... emotionally cunning plot and themes of romanticism punctured, trapped rurality and the power of stories true or false ... each character has its own rhythm and eloquence, absurdity and dignity ... as ever in McDonagh, a jagged, violent darkness feeds the comedy, and laughter glistens in the deepest despair. In its final moments the see-saw of hope and tragedy moves so fast you gasp. -- Libby Purves * The Times *
A gloriously perverse writing talent ... playing with Irish stereotypes, flaunting the scabrous and outrageous is McDonagh's stock in trade ... his gift for teasing with comic caricature romps away ... language to bite on and speeches that ring with unusual cadences. -- Susannah Clapp * Observer *
Packed with cranky characters, running gags and entertainingly rude slurs, plus psychopathic moments -- Kate Bassett * Independent on Sunday *
As soon as you encounter any literary representations of 'the real Ireland', you enter the world of myth and myth-making, and the play has great ironic fun with all this. It's a mash-up of Irishness and stage Irishness, poverty and groping priests, ignorance supplemented by an utterly untrammelled imagination, a pastiche of Synge and Yeats and all that old Oirishy ... But there's also a genuinely haunting sense here that your impoverished Irish peasant, before cars and TV and radio and the net, really did have a freedom of imagination now lost -- Christopher Hart * The Sunday Times *
Wistful ... McDonagh's greatest skill is investing his characters with authentic voices and distinct personalities ... this is theatre with a living, beating heart -- Tim Walker * Sunday Telegraph *