Maybe it's because: I am partly of Irish descent; I appreciate quirky humor; I'm fascinated by the darker side of life; I have traveled to the isolated Aran Islands several times; I engage in Disability Studies; I've seen all of the other plays of Martin McDonagh; the Off-Broadway theater is in my neighborhood.
All of the above coalesced the night I saw a revival of The Cripple of Inishmaan. For over a decade, this McDonagh drama had piqued my curiosity. The name alone is so disability-in-your-face.
Set in the early 1930s on the remote islands off Ireland's west coast where the bleak landscape is reflected in the impoverished lives of its inhabitants, the tale revolves around a disabled protagonist named Billy. Orphaned soon after birth, Cripple Billy (his full moniker throughout the play) was adopted by two old sisters whom he calls his "aunts," and raised in the back of their small, sparsely stocked grocery shop. Non-disabled characters refer to his "host of troubles" in scene after scene, and inevitably draw comparisons with their own troubles — only to be grateful that they are not poor Cripple Billy who largely spends his time staring at cows.
One day the local news teller informs the community that a director from Hollywood has arrived on the neighboring isle of Innishmore. The director's intent is to make a documentary about the harshness of island-life, and he has planned to hold auditions to cast authentic characters. (In actuality, Robert Flaherty did come from sunny California to shoot Man of Aran, released in 1934). Billy views an audition as a once in a lifetime opportunity to escape from his dreary existence as a cripple without expectations in terms of employment or romance, the object of everyone's insults. Feigning a diagnosis of tuberculosis, Billy plays on local fisherman Babbybobby's good nature (the disease having claimed his own wife) to transport him to the film's location. Lo and behold, Billy meets the director, makes a favorable impression, and departs for Hollywood without saying goodbye to his kin, leaving them both forlorn and angry.
His absence stuns the close-knit islanders who pride themselves on knowing everything about each other. Who knew he possessed such audacity? Who thought he had the wits? Of all the islanders, how come a cripple won the favor of a Hollywood director? And oh, the ingratitude toward those who took him in and raised him! Without a doubt, Billy's absence leaves a hole in the lives of all other characters whether they were those who loved or teased him.
As with most people who gamble their chances in Tinseltown, it becomes Billy's Boulevard of Broken Dreams. We see him alone on a bed in a run down rooming house, wracked with pain. Delusional, close to death, he addresses a mother he has never known, asking, "What would Heaven be like, Mammy? I've heard 'tis a beautiful place, more beautiful than Ireland even, but even if it is for sure, it wouldn't be near as beautiful as you. I do wonder would they let cripple boys go to Heaven at all. Sure, wouldn't we go uglifying the place?" Lights fade.
Time passes. People (including the audience) believe Billy is dead. But, like a ghost, he appears unexpectedly in his own village to a surprised community unsure of how to respond. Any happiness is tempered by knowing his calculated deceit of Babbybobby through a cruel lie, and his subsequent escape without a backward glance to the dreary lives of envious island folks destined never see the world. Bartley, a local villager, remarks, "You're awful clever for a cripple-boy, Billy… You've made a laughing stock of every beggar on Inishmaan, all thought you'd gone and croaked it, like eejits, me included. Fair play to ya." To hear him, Billy rejected Hollywood, although in reality Hollywood rejected him. Regardless, he came back to Ireland because, according to him, home is, "… here on Inishmaan, with the people who love me, and the people who I love back."
With the return of the prodigal son, a semblance of normalcy resumes: his aunts fuss and fawn; Babbybobby violently beats him; Helen, the girl who has previously scorned his advances, continues to do so, but then relents and agrees to go walking together — as long as no one can see. In brief, all seems well enough. However, soon after his reintegration, in true dramatic irony, Billy does actually develop TB, violently coughing blood before the curtain falls.
What is the audience to make of this play? On one hand, Cripple Billy is the lynchpin of the community. On the other, he is incessantly demeaned whether it be the subtle patronization of his aunts or outright denigration by the girl he loves. Yet, above all, he is a resilient, complex, interesting character that tries to make sense of the world around him and the strange people who inhabit it. With twisted arm and leg, and a facial gestures signifying partial paralysis, Billy drags his body back and forth across the stage, presenting a compelling presence that requires the audience to follow every move and gesture.
To state the obvious, it was satisfying to see a crip protagonist who was not pitiful, despite the onslaught of insults. I found myself wondering: what are audience members to make of relentless cripple-upon-cripple references? Abandoned by parents. Rejected in love. Without any prospects. Despite all of the elements of a tragic figure in the air, he is never weighed down.
At one juncture, by a slip of the tongue, Billy laments his loss of the intended part as a cripple in a film to a non-disabled actor. What irony when during curtain call, the actor playing Billy walked effortlessly onto the stage, leaving me to think: wouldn't an actor with a disability be excellent for this part? Has it ever been done with a disabled actor? If not, why not?
The New York Times (December 22, 2008) raved about the substance of the play and a careful production that helped transport the entranced audience to gossip-hungry rural Ireland, over 80 years ago. The heading aptly read: On a Barren Isle, Gift of the Gab, and Subversive Charm. Interestingly, perhaps because of the timing near Christmas, the reviewer evoked the archetype/stereotype Dickensian disabled character from Scrooge, well known to scholars of Disability Studies. In Cripple Billy, he wrote, the play offers "its own salty variation on that sugarplum Tiny Tim." I can only concur.
Recalling Nancy Mairs' memoir, As a Cripple, I Swagger, I was intrigued by her provocative harnessing of the two words, cripple and swagger. The title conveys an embracing of self-identified criphood, coupled with unabashed, demonstrative pride. While the character of Cripple Billy is hardly politicized in the same way, he is a well-developed, complex individual who possess wile, wit, imagination, and self-determination, refusing limitations that others place upon him. In his own way, in a world of literature that encompasses so many pitiful, stereotypic embittered, two-dimensional disabled characters, he is a cripple who swaggers to the sound of his own drum.
