In an annus mirabilis starting in 1994, the unknown and unemployed Martin McDonagh wrote seven plays. Six of them became resounding successes on the London stage (four of them at the same time) and transformed his life. One remained unperformed because, he told a New Yorker interviewer in 2006, it “isn’t any good”. It was called The Banshees of Inisheer.
McDonagh is now better known as a film director, with equally spectacular success. The Banshees of Inisherin probably changed more than its title in transition from abandoned play to prize-winning film, but there is no doubt about its impact: as well as a string of Golden Globe and Bafta nods, it has been nominated for no fewer than nine Oscars. Often described – oddly – as a “black comedy”, the film is set in the Connemara island world that McDonagh used for his plays, familiar to him from childhood holidays (he was born and bred in London’s Irish community). The story is bleak and challenging, dealing with the breakdown of an old friendship, against a background of loneliness, cruelty and ominous threat. The passion and savagery of the early plays is muted, but omnipresent.
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