Black pastorals, experientiality and the realism of extremes in Martin McDonagh’s plays. A case study: The Beauty Queen of Leenane and The Pillowman
Black pastorals, experientiality and the realism of extremes in Martin McDonagh’s plays. A case study: The Beauty Queen of Leenane and The Pillowman

Summary/Abstract: While his movies have definitely placed him into the category of the most remarkable movie directors of the past few decades – from In Bruges to Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri or The Banshees of Inisherin – Martin McDonagh has established himself, first and foremost, as one of the most prolific playwrights of his generation. His plays, a mixture of cruel irony and extreme violence, depict Ireland as a space of hopelessness and isolation, which shows no remorse and has no mercy for its tragic protagonists. His plays have often been described as a reinvention of the pastoral, with a significant twist of the genre in terms of atmosphere, storytelling, themes, and (anticlimactic) resolutions, with Nicholas Grene (2000, p. 68) defining such plays as “Black Pastorals”. Thus, the purpose of the paper is to highlight and analyze the key features of Black Pastorals in two of McDonagh's plays: The Beauty Queen of Leenane and The Pillowman. While apparently different, the two plays share a series of common paradigms that determine the manifestation of the Black Pastoral through concepts such as “experientiality” and “the realism of extremes”. Through close reading and plot analysis, the purpose is to highlight how McDonagh relates to the helplessness and isolation of the protagonists, the dysfunctional nature of the family dynamics and last, but not least, the relation between past and present, as well as cause and effect, in order to tell the violent and, yet, comical stories of 20th and 21st century Ireland.

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