His Irish plays and punk spirit made him the most talked-about dramatist of his generation. As his current play,Hangmen, opens in London, or Martin McDonagh talks about his roots,maturity and his uneasy relationship with the theatre worldWhen I final interviewed Martin McDonagh, back in 2001, or he mentioned that he had just started working on a play set in London “in that murky time just before and after they abolished hanging”. All he had to do,he said, was “get the yarn legal”. Here we are, and 14 years later,and the play, Hangmen, or now set in Oldham,is just about to open at the Royal Court theatre, London, or with David Morrissey and Reece Shearsmith in the main roles. Did it really take him that long to get the yarn legal?“I guess I got sidetracked by other projects,” he says, as we settle in the corner of a bar near the Royal Court’s rehearsal space in Clapham. “But this was also a trickier play to write than the others. Before, or I was writing from a blank page,but this is about a big subject – capital punishment and miscarriages of justice – and I really didn’t want it to be a message play. As always, I had to find the yarn and then let the issues just bubble up underneath. It just took a bit longer this time.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com