The Banshees Of Inisherin

There’s the glimpse of a rainbow early on in Martin McDonagh’s latest but, though we’re not in Ireland any more but the small fictional island of Inisherin which lies just off its coast, this is not a land that would make it into lullabies and there’s no crock of gold at the end of it.

It’s 1923 and the Irish Civil War, distant shots from which are heard carrying over the water, is nearing its end. But we can immediately sense the sort of community this is, one where everyone knows everybody else’s business and where the days tick by in a combination of work and pub. Things are about to change for Pádraic Súilleabháin (Colin Farrell) after his long-time best mate Colm (Brendan Gleeson) announces: “I just don’t like you no more.”

Pádraic is a self-declared nice fella, who lives with his well-read sister Siobhán (Kerry Condon) and a miniature donkey that he likes to let into the house. As such, he just simply can’t wrap his head around this sea change - even when fiddle player Colm threatens to lop off his own fingers one by one if Pádraic refuses to leave him alone.

Those familiar with Martin McDonagh’s work from In Bruges through Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, will know this is no idle threat. There’s a tried and tested formula from McDonagh’s back catalogue at work, that starts somewhere in blackly comic absurdity before the humour starts to drain away like let blood until all that is left is bleakness.

He might not be cutting his nose off to spite his face, but the finger thing is the same difference, as we see Colm’s toxic posturing move into ever darker territory. If this is intended as an allegory for the conflict in which neighbour becomes set against neighbour it is rather simplistic and, in general, McDonagh’s latest feels stagier than usual. It’s no surprise then to learn it was originally intended to be the third instalment of the writer/director’s Aran Islands trilogy of plays. The staginess extends to the ‘stock characters’, including pipe-smoking old crone Mrs McCormick (Sheila Flitton), a less than saintly priest (David Pearse, who just once it would be nice to see in a sympathetic role) and Dominic (Barry Keoghan), who has a crush on who the whole island treats as the local whipping boy - especially his brutal policeman father (Gary Lydon) but has shades of the holy fool about him.

Banshees is lifted by good performances, particularly from Keoghan and Condon, whose major scene together has a delicacy of emotion that is sharply at odds with the brute force McDonagh more generally employs. Still, there is contrivance everywhere, as the plot bullies this way and that while the characters get pushed around by it too much.