Pillow Talk

I just finished The Pillowman and it is very very very dark stuff. It’s about power, it’s about guilt, it’s about family, it’s about an artist’s desperation just to be noticed even if they are to be despised, it has graphic descriptions of violence towards children and yet somehow, SOMEHOW, it made me laugh. McDonagh really is a genius. I bet when this was performed many of the laughs were laughs of relief; of pressure being released out of the theater but when you just read it you don’t get that communal reassurance. You have to let yourself off the hook and it’s just different. It’s a tad twisted. But it’s self-evidently brilliant.

I’ll read one more McDonough before I move on to something else. Next up is the Lieutenant of Inishmore. I’ll report back. I tentatively have Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? lined up. Shoot, after another one of these plays I’m probably going to need a therapy in hardback anyway!

Note: I just discovered that McDonagh literally wrote a play called “A Very Very Very Dark Matter”. At least we’re aligned. He is an absurdist sadist.

Play time

Reading. I love reading. I joked yesterday with Delali that if I won the lottery, I'd just read. Read and watch movies… after doing all the honorable charitable stuff. Obviously.

But reading. When does one find the time? Well, if you want to read, you’ll read. We can all  forgo 45 minutes a day of scrolling if we really had to. Still, for those that just can’t, I found a hack to facilitate your pseudo-intellectual ambitions.  

No. It’s not reading articles. Articles don’t count. This post doesn’t count either. Anything that is written with the goal of getting clicks doesn’t count. Sorry. 

The hack is plays. Theatrical plays. Not sports. Sorry again. Short plays. Funny plays. Sort, funny plays of substance.

I hadn’t forgotten how wonderful Martin McDonagh's plays were. After falling instantly in love with In Bruges and reading the spec script for Seven Psychopaths in my first Hollywood internship I delved into his playwriting career 15 years ago. Back then, I read the Beauty Queen of Leenane and remember chuckling out loud a lot. It’s impossible not to read his work with an Irish accent. His writing feels like Pinter’s “The Dumb Waiter” meeting Father Ted. Or maybe Beckett’s “Huis Clos” meets Father Ted. Either way, it’s something tense meeting something whimsical and Irish. Folksy, funny and fatalistic banter. 

Recently I discovered that my Great Grandmother was Irish. A total surprise to me that has opened up some fun personal identity narratives to play with whilst musing on one’s own nature. In literature, I love imbeciles. I love narratives about humble people with modest goals being held back by hilariously miserable bastards. I love the underdog and I love schemers. I don’t like to be sad but I like work that excuses people who are accustomed to and comfortable in misery. These themes really find a home in Irish culture so perhaps my lineage should’t be a surprise after all.  

This week, I read The Cripple of Inishmaan. It was 90 pages. I read before bed, while I burped my daughter and while I was on the loo. Who can’t fit in 90 bloody pages of double spaced dialogue into 5 days for feck’s sake? It was terrific.  It compelled me into quiet moments and it awed me. So simple. So funny. So sad. So good. So short. I just ordered two more McDonagh plays. So if you know me IRL and I tell you to “feck off” just understand that it's nothing personal. I’m just trying to read more.