The Lieutenant of Inishmore– Week Four

We start the fourth week’s rehearsals in a similar way to how we ended week three – working through each scene in detail and layering on top. This week, though, we have our wonderful writer, Martin McDonagh, back in the room with us. He’s here to look at what we’ve done so far and also to answer any questions that have arisen during rehearsals.

It’s great to have Martin’s insight and he raises his own questions too. He joins us at the beginning of the week and we look at a few things differently as he offers a new perspective on some of our character choices. We end Monday with more things to uncover over the course of the week, Martin reminding us all of the stakes in the play – each life can find itself in danger within seconds and he encourages us to play that further in our version of the play. It’s helpful to be reminded of that at this stage.

Later on in the week we have a ‘sound day’ where our Sound Designer, Adam Cork, spends the day with us going through all the sound cues in the play, including the cat sounds and gunshots. We go through each one individually to make sure it is in the right place for the actors. It’s such a fun rehearsal as people must learn the rhythm for their bullets to make each one work. This is crucial, particularly in Scene Eight where there is so much gunfire. It’s great to introduce this element into the rehearsal room now as everything feels like it’s really starting to come alive.

We end the week with what we call a ‘put together’ – the first time we run all the scenes back-to-back. We don’t call it a ‘run’ as we’re not at that stage yet. It is wonderful to see it all in one go, and watching this Michael decides we should put in an interval. It’s also clear from the put together how much joy is important in this play, due to its satirical nature, and also how easy it is to get this off-balance. We end the week discussing this, looking forward to making sure we find this balance next week.