Crap New Irish Playwrights

duran duran

Isn't it time we told the truth? The new generation of male Irish Playwrights - Conor McPherson, Martin McDonagh - write, well, deadly dull plays.

McPhersons terminal monologues are a great cure for insomnia, but not much in the way of insight or food for the spirit. McDonagh's plays show such a pleasure in cruelty that they might be the work of a disturbed fifteen year old.

Where is the new Brian Freil? The new Frank McGuiness? Where are the real playwrights?

Isn't there anyone besides Marina Carr writing real drama these days?

Baz_

is there a reason you highlight the males in the playwright world, or is it just that all the women are brilliant. I dont know the first thing about contemporary playwrights, nor about past playwrights, but I do wonder why you would single out the males.

duran duran

Nah, it just so happens that she's the only young Irish playwright thats worth watching at the moment. McPherson and McDonagh write pub plays set in the West of Ireland - which really go over well with the London and New York set, who aren't really versed in or interested by anything other than the usual Irish stereotypes.

This leprachaun chic stuff has really passed it's sell by.

But they still go on producing plays set in Connemara concerning men who can't communicate, women who are either madonna's or whores, and all expressed in a quaint vernacular that no one in Ireland speaks.

Irish playwriting these days is dull, thematically conservative, and unoriginal - bar Marina Carr - it's not a "male" "female" thing, it's just a fact.

duran duran

I see Martin McDonagh is outraged that they won't stage his new play about the INLA (The Something of Something) at The National Theatre. Could it be that his cynical "plague on all thier houses" Oirish crap is going rapidly out of fashion?

Oh, say yes...

duran duran

Enda Walsh. Yet another new, melodramatic, and crap Irish playwright. Isn't there anyone out there interesting enough to save the Irish playwriting tradition?

shotamoose

I've only seen two conor mcpherson works - Saltwater (a film, but based on his play This Lime Tree Bower) and Dublin Carol, and they're both set in or around Dublin. Both very good, I thought. McDonagh's far more vulnerable to the 'leprechaun chic' charge, IMHO.

duran duran

ah, but do you remeber what thier themes were?