‘If I was Irish I'd be crying by now’: Irishness and exteriority, Doyle's Deportees and the Irish plays of Martin McDonagh

Abstract

While variations on the relationship between Irishness and exteriority resound throughout Irish literature and Irish studies, the implications and applications of the version offered by Roddy Doyle's short story ‘Home to Harlem’ remain underdeveloped. This article explores the particular paradigm of Irishness derivable from Doyle's work, and is motivated by it to revisit and re-examine the Irish plays of Martin McDonagh and the question of audience relation to them. I argue that the constituents of the overly rehearsed ‘McDonagh enigma’ – his reliance on stereotypical representation and his highlighting of artifice – ensure a dynamic of recognition and exteriority in the Irish-identifying audience, which, in turn, enacts an extreme version of the process of Irishness extrapolable from Doyle.

Keywords:

• Martin McDonagh
• Roddy Doyle
• exteriority
• Irishness

Notes

 1. Doyle, ‘Foreword’, The Deportees and Other Stories, xi–xii.

 2. Doyle, ‘Home to Harlem’, The Deportees and Other Stories (London: Vintage, 2007), 180. Subsequent references are in-text and to this edition.

 3. Kristeva, Strangers to Ourselves, 195.

 4. Kristeva, Strangers to Ourselves, 192.

 5. Kristeva, Nations without Nationalism, 21.

 6. Kristeva, Strangers to Ourselves, 170.

 7. Kiberd, ‘Strangers in their Own Country’, 65.

 8. Kiberd, “Strangers in their Own Country,”, 72.

 9. See the deployment of Appiah's concept in relation to Irish culture in Kuhling and Keohane, Cosmopolitan Ireland, 211.

10. Hall, ‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora’, 230.

11. Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,”, 227.

12. Foster, Modern Ireland, 596.

13. Lonergan, ‘“The Laughter Will Come of Itself”’, 636.

14. Keating, ‘Is Martin McDonagh an Irish Playwright?’, 281.

15. Mac Dubhghaill, ‘Drama Sails to Seven Islands’, 12; see also Lonergan, ‘“The Laughter Will Come of Itself”’, 640.

16. O'Toole qtd by Fricker, ‘Ireland Feels Power of Beauty’, 377.

17. Arrowsmith, ‘Genuinely Inauthentic’, 239.

18. Arrowsmith, “Genuinely Inauthentic,”, 240.

19. McDonagh to O'Toole, ‘Martin McDonagh’.

20. Luckhurst, ‘Martin McDonagh's The Lieutenant of Inishmore’, 38.

21. McDonagh to O'Toole, ‘Martin McDonagh’.

22. McDonagh to Mimi Kramer qtd by Diehl, ‘Classic Realism’, 108.

23. For example Murray, ‘The Cripple of Inishmaan Meets Lady Gregory’, 84; Fitzpatrick, ‘Language Games’, 148.

24. O'Toole to Magill qtd by Fricker, ‘Ireland Feels Power of Beauty’, 377.

25. Sierz, In-yer-face Theatre.

26. McDonagh to O'Toole, ‘Martin McDonagh’.

27. Keating, ‘Is Martin McDonagh an Irish Playwright?’, 281.

28. McDonagh to O'Toole, ‘Martin McDonagh’.

29. McDonagh qtd by Luckhurst, ‘Martin McDonagh's The Lieutenant of Inishmore’, 38.

30. Chambers and Jordan, ‘Introduction’, 7.

31. See Lonergan, The Theatre and Films of Martin McDonagh, 12.

32. McDonagh, The Beauty Queen of Leenane (London: Methuen, 1996), 4. Subsequent references are in-text and to this edition.

33. O'Toole, ‘The Beauty Queen of Leenane’, 381.

34. O'Toole, “The Beauty Queen of Leenane,”, 379.

35. O'Toole, “The Beauty Queen of Leenane,”, 381.

36. See also Patrick Lonergan's account of Beauty Queen's relation to a ‘typical Irish play’: the audience ‘must have been aware that they had seen something that was simultaneously over-familiar and alienating: a play that was full of codes and signals that seemed to promise conventional meanings, but which instead had led them down several interpretative blind alleys’ (The Theatre and Films of Martin McDonagh, 45, 46).

37. McDonagh, A Skull in Connemara (London: Methuen, 1997), 13. Subsequent references are in-text and to this edition.

38. Catherine Rees argues that McDonagh uses ‘The Quiet Man to destroy the mythology it creates’ (‘The Politics of Morality’, 137).

39. McDonagh, The Lonesome West (London: Methuen, 1997), 34. Subsequent references are in-text and to this edition.

40. Patrick Lonergan (who argues, by contrast, that these ‘symbols mean nothing to Valene or Coleman’) reads the image as remaining intact, and speculates that ‘perhaps the purpose of those images is […] to force the audience to think about their own lives and their responsibilities’ (Theatre and Films of Martin McDonagh, 42). This is not inconsistent with the extension of the kind of shortfall experienced by Valene to the audience.

41. Merriman, ‘Decolonisation Postponed’, 316.

42. McDonagh, The Cripple of Inishmaan, in The Methuen Drama Anthology of Irish Plays, 331–421 (355). Subsequent references are in-text and to this edition.

43. John Wayne's Sean Thornton meets this response when seeking directions to Inishfree in the opening scene of The Quiet Man.

44. Lonergan, ‘“Never Mind the Shamrocks”’, 165. Lonergan sees the play as having a ‘didactic’ function with regard to ‘the need to avoid accepting mediated images of Ireland uncritically’.

45. See John Waters's reaction to The Beauty Queen of Leenane: ‘I knew this’ (Waters, ‘The Irish Mummy’, 30).

46. Both McDonagh and Patrick Lonergan draw attention to the former's work as ‘skewing’ that which is recognisable or familiar (McDonagh to O'Toole, ‘Martin McDonagh’; Lonergan, ‘“The Laughter Will Come of Itself”’, 637).

47. McDonagh, Lonesome West, 50.

48. McDonagh to O'Toole, ‘Martin McDonagh’.