the lonesome west | about the leenane trilogy

THE LONESOME WEST is the third play in Martin McDonagh's Leenane Trilogy, a series of plays about the same small town in western Ireland. Together, the plays sketch in a town full of dysfunctional and violent family relationships, from the mother-daughter duo in THE BEAUTY QUEEN OF LEENANE who give THE LONESOME WEST's Valene and Coleman a run for their money, to the grave digger in A SKULL IN CONNEMARA whose wife dies under mysterious circumstances, these three plays weave a fascinating, dark, poetic, and comedic image of life.

From Fintan O'Toole's introduction to the Bloomsbury publication of all three plays:

"The savagery of the plays is not literal, but neither is it pure invention. It comes from a vividly imagined sense of cultural infusion, from a world in which meanings and values have been shattered into odd-shaped fragments. And what's more important is that the plays themselves try to put the fragments back together again... And what matters in the end is that McDonagh is more than just a clever theatrical stylist. His tricks and turns have purpose. They are bridges over a deep pit of sympathy and sorrow, illuminated by a tragic vision of stunted and frustrated lives. Moments of love and loss, yearning and even faith catch the light now and then. That they cannot abide long in such a blighted world seems somehow less remarkable than the fact that they arise at all."