Galway Advertiser 2006/2006_08_31/GA_3108_E1_020.pdf 

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LETTERS

August 31 2006

A different view of The Lieutenant of Inishmore
Dear editor, In response to the review of The Lieutenant of Inishmore published in the Galway Advertiser, August 24. The Lieutenant of Inishmore starts with a dead cat. By play end there are two dead cats not to mention four men, in one way or another all on account of the murderous love one man has for his feline Wee Thomas. Tragedy? Not a bit of it. This is farce at its best. Hilarious black humour that never ever strays beyond surfaces to meaning or what it is that make humans tick. The Lieutenant of Inishmore has been compared with Father Ted. In his acclaimed sitcom, Dermot Morgan satirised the Catholic Church so effectively, that the series was initially rejected by RTE, and only screened on the national station after it had an airing on Channel 4. Even as the scandals were coming out about the Catholic Church, they still held positions of prestige in the country with the State underwriting huge compensations for the crimes they committed while hardly any of the clergy were jailed. In The Lieutenant of Inishmore Martin McDonagh targets a republican splinter group for parody. The INLA, who broke with the Provos in the mid-seventies, never grew as they expected, and became increasingly trapped in the cul-de sac of guerrillaism, turning it into a strategy as they degenerated. By the early nineties they were marginalised and almost wholly engaged in murderous feuds that practically wiped the organisation out. There is a world of difference between the two targets. The last scene in this play is sensational. Having someone killed on stage is always of shock value and interest. Imagine the reaction if you visually portray death, dismemberment and a river of blood and guts all in one scene. This is the stuff of Beavis `n Butthead wet dreams. There is no question but that using the INLA as back-story enabled McDonagh to get as much gore as he could on the stage this side of celluloid. It is a cheap trick. But it fits in with his trajectory in recent years. McDonagh's best play was The Beauty Queen of Leenane. Imitative, true, but the sparkling dialogue, the fast moving action, the characterisation and above all the pathos and predicament of the main characters led critics to believe here was a new young innovative playwright. The second and third in the trilogy and in particular The Cripple of Innismaan confirmed that this was not so. The latter rests on hilarious one-liners; despite lifechanging events, there is stasis: the protagonist never even begins the journey of self-discovery. In The Lieutenant of Inishmore you never get an insight into Paraic's pathological drive unless you count the `tramping on me Ma' that his father confesses to. And this is only alluded to in a kind of Monty Python type of black humour. All the characters are cartoons. Donny is little more that a buffoon with a taste for whiskey; Davey a simpleton, cut straight from the Mc Dougal (Father Ted) cloth; the guerrillas all relentless ruthless psychopaths. Action is more important that characterisation; Synge dumbed-down meets Tarrantino. The production at the Town Hall is superb. But why is a play about a dead cat and his infantile owner's retribution - against a backdrop of feuding INLA - being hailed not alone here, but also in the West End and Broadway? The key reason is that it is of its time. The Lieutenant of Inishmore is a reflection of the purposelessness and lack of meaning that people feel in their lives. McDonagh belongs to a style in art, literature and drama that is currently in vogue, a style that focuses on surfaces. It is in reality a hollow cry of despair in the 21st century as Dubya Bush drags the world into further wars. Ultimately, unfortunately, this type of art supports the status quo. Yours, Maureen Gallagher

Displays of
aggression

`Keep your bins indoors', says management company
Dear editor. 21st century Galway. A Green Party mayor. City centre apartments. Non existing bin area! The property management company respomsible for the building has just informed all the residents of Spanish Parade house that from next Monday it will be more healthy and safe to store big rubbish bags inside our apartments for days (even weeks) rather than in outside bin containers. The current solution is not ideal at all, because plastic containers are dragged down the stairs early in the morning and cause huge noise. But introducing bin bags type of leave-outside-housewhen-filled-to-top solution takes us back to 19th century. We will have to wait days to fill one bag. And whereabouts to store these bags inside? In the kitchen? In the sitting room or in the corridor? When it's filled to the top it is quite heavy, smelly of decomposing food remains and wet. And then we'll have to drag it downstairs to put outside the apartment block. Just in front of the new Galway Museum. What a lovely beautification of the area! Galway is proud to be considered as one of the greenest towns in Ireland. But this management company which runs dozens of apartment blocks around Galway turns its back to recycling and separating waste and health and safety regulations. Who to blame? According to their director there is "no suitable location to store refuse bins within the development". Can you believe? Instead of looking for a proper solution and providing and enforcing recycling and waste separation, from the next week on we will have to buy pricey big bin bags to fill the pockets of their contractors and follow their throw-everythinginto-one-bag arrangement and also enjoy a lovely smell of rubbish in our apartments. What a healthy approach! I would like to congratulate people who granted planning permission to even build this complex. And this is not the only building in Galway lacking basic facilities such as a bin area. I am sure our Galway City Council knows about plenty of places of living in Galway where refuse collection lacks any common sense. And what about race against waste? Recycling, reusing and reducing. Is there anything you can do to force those responsible to provide 21st century amenities to the citizens of Galway? Until then we are going to get used to experience 19th century living ... Yours Marek

not the answer for the Middle East
Dear editor, The rationale offered by the writer on this page (August 17) for Israel's invasion of Lebanon is "Hezbollah aggression quietly building its arsenal with the help of Iran and Syria and launching more than 4,000 rockets into Israel killing more than 54 civilians." Hezbollah has accumulated rockets over which the official Lebanese Army have no control. That is potentially dangerous. On July 12 Hezbollah fighters killed eight Israeli soldiers and fired two of those rockets into Israel. The Israeli Government response was to launch a military invasion and bombing of Lebanon, resulting in the death of 1,183 Lebanese civilians. But the overwhelming majority of the 3,970 rockets Hezbollah fired into Israel (killing 43 Israeli civilians) were fired AFTER Israel launched its invasion of Lebanon, not before. At one time the IRA were thought to have acquired sufficient illegal arms to pose a credible threat to the Irish Army. The Irish and British Governments removed the basis for the IRA threat by building a just solution in Northern Ireland. I humbly suggest that finding a just solution for both Israelis and Palestinians is the way forward, not displays of aggression which inevitably result in counter-aggression. Yours, Peter Butler 16 Lios Na Run, Ballybane, Galway

Israel's war crimes are indefensible
Dear Editor, I write this open letter to the `very upset Jew living in Galway' who wrote to the Galway Advertiser actually defending Israel's war crimes in Lebanon last month and Israel's fascist occupation on Palestine. I read your letter as the topic of war in the Middle East is a topic closely followed within my family. I noticed that your letter's facts were twodimensional and that sympathy was your method to try to sway people towards the idea that the slaughter of thousands of men, women and children was justifiable. You made reference to the Cossacks who massacred tens of thousands of Jews during the Khmelnytsky Uprising but, in a fashion similar to the fascist Israeli Government, you bent the truth to suit your argument. I noticed you failed to inform readers that these Cossacks were impoverished peasants who rose against these Jews, who were given privileged lifestyles by Polish magnates, in order to gain a decent standard of living. This is quite similar to today's situation in Israel, a country which has, to date, received over 134 billion dollars in foreign aid from the worlds biggest super-power, the United States. This is compared to Palestinians who fight with Russian guns which are over 50 years old and which are helpless against Israeli tanks, helicopters, jets and fortified bulldozers. You made reference to the Hebron Massacre on August 20 1929. You told how 67 Jews had been killed but failed to specify the nature of the situation: mobs of Zionists had taken control of the Western Wall, which had been under Arab control for 1,100 years, chanting `The Wall is ours!' . Rabbi Baruch Kaplan who was in Hebron the day of the massacre stated; "It's hard to understand why they felt that way considering they have no connection to the Jewish holy places whatsoever". In anger the Arabs of Hebron in an attempt to kill Zionists, also happened to kill many innocent Jews. Kaplan also stated that. This seems to be the justification that the Israeli Government feeds the world nowadays. The prime example of this is the fact that over 1,000 people were killed in Lebanon less than a month ago, 90 per cent of whom were innocent civilians, only 10 per cent actual Hezbollah fighters. I ask you, can you honestly justify this slaughter of 900 civilians for what began as the kidnapping of two soldiers? The world is aware of the discrimination that exists and has existed towards Jews and do sympathise but how can you honestly expect us to sympathise, with a nation whose policies have grown to a level of pure evil and hatred towards impoverished and helpless citizens. You picked the wrong city to preach to because the people of Galway know of the hate - crimes which occur daily in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and no amount of sympathy could possibly make us support a country (not a religion!) which willingly cuts farmers off from their land by means of building the atrocious Apartheid Wall inside the West Bank. Israel is a country which demolishes hundreds of civilians' houses in order to uncover a handful of explosives, a country that has introduced shoot-tokill policies for offenders of unfair curfews it has introduced within Palestine, a country with a GNP higher than Ireland which receives billions of dollars in military aid to `protect' themselves from some of the poorest people in the world who are merely looking to live a life, a country that has inspired fear into neighbouring countries and indeed, many of its own citizens. But surely the death toll speaks for itself: How, I ask you finally, can you expect the public to agree with you that the murder of 4,000 Palestinians since 2000 is something that we should support? Yours, A keen 17-year-old Palestinian supporter

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR:

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