Dismembered limbs, instruments of torture and blood – lots of blood – play central roles in the black comedy about terrorism in Ireland. The play is the second in McDonagh's Aran Island Trilogy. It is sandwiched between “The Cripple of Inishmaan” and the yet to be performed “The Banshees of Inisheer.” Each is a snapshot of life on what Decker calls “these God-forsaken islands.”
“On a high level, the play deals with how ridiculously insane terrorism is. You can blow up my family, you can blow up my house, but when it's all done, what have you really accomplished?” says Decker. “McDonagh writes so cerebrally that when you see something happen, it is so ridiculous. A lot of the humor is that you can't believe what you see.”
And what you see requires extraordinary effort on behalf of the actors and the crew.
Dave Blamy was told up front that his character would be tortured while hanging from a pulley by his ankles. He took the role anyway.
Blamy trained for the scene every day for three months. He began by hanging over chairs at home. That didn't work. So Decker purchased an inversion table that allowed Blamy to practice incrementally. The first time he hung upside down, he lasted three minutes. Now he can withstand 10 minutes. “The only thing I can't control is my face getting really red,” says Blamy.
Brett Gentile plays Padraic, a violent Irish Liberation Army enforcer with a soft spot for his best friend, Wee Thomas. “Everybody is abused in this show one way or another,” says Gentile, who admits to a few bruises during rehearsal. “I haven't had this much fun since undergrad,” he says with a laugh.
The set will be the scene of a nightly bloodbath. Each performance will sport 30 rounds of ammunition and approximately 3 gallons of spilt blood. The stage will be painted with five coats of water sealant to ease cleanup. Even so, it will take a four-person crew three hours to set up and two hours to clean the stage after each performance. The theater has showers and laundry facilities so the actors don't have to travel home looking like crime victims.
And then there is the fake blood. “The blood budget alone is ridiculous,” says Decker. “A gallon of one type of blood is $45.” And how many types of blood are there? There's a blood that is friendly to the eyes, because sometimes it gets splashed there. There's sticky blood, and blood that is formulated to splatter. There is blood that lands in big glops, “more like pieces of flesh,” says Decker. And then there is mass blood, which is blood mixed with baby detergent so that it easily washes out of clothes, and is kinder to the skin of the actors who are bathed in it.
At face value,
the juxtaposition of the mundane and the
gory is orchestrated for laughs. But if you
like to philosophize, there is meat enough
for that. The play is “so covered with angel
food cake and frosting, that if you get the
substance out of it, great,” says Decker.
“There is a morsel of vitamin C, but mostly
it's fast food.”
