Tragedy and laughs

I like Martin McDonagh, i like him a lot. I liked 'in bruges' and i am convinced i am going to like 'the pillowman' when I get round to reading him. In my previous post about 'in bruges' i concentrated in the fact that the movie was a tragicomedy, in the manner of Shakespearian 'tempest' or 'twelfth night'. Such an interesting genre, tragicomedies are, and a very risky one at that. The issue with them, is that the atmosphere they build can be spoilt very easily. In the same way, Almodovar threatened to spoil his dark, sombre, tragic atmosphere, in 'Broken embraces', with his last scene (but didn't), tragicomedies are constantly walking the same thin line.

'The beauty queen on Leenane' runs the same risk: Martin McDonagh's first play, is a deep and profound tragedy of human inadequacy, laced with darkly funny one-liners. The issue is that the fact that this IS a tragedy has to remain clear to the audience throughout, or at least it needs to be prevalent after the tragic storyline starts to unravel. When i read the play, it was clear to me that this was a tragedy and the humour was just there to undermine but ultimately underline the tragedy of it all. When we saw the play on friday however, the audience made up of well-dressed mature women seemed to fall for the comedy rather than the tragedy part of the play. The result? A really uncomfortable two hours where I would hear the audience audibly laughing at every hint of humour, entirely disregarding the drama that was unfolding in front of their eyes. It almost felt as if they were desperate to see only the funny bits of the play, exactly because the dark parts were too dark and too tragic.

Talk about art being poignant...