Brotherly shove: Anthony Lawton (left) and Ross Beschler play homicidally fractious siblings.

Wild, Wild West

Martin McDonagh’s black comedy is full-throttle entertainment.

by J. Cooper Robb

Lantern Theater Company’s production of The Lonesome West is powerful, raw, violent and obscenely poetic theater.

Part of playwright Martin McDonagh’s “Leenane Trilogy,” Lonesome West (which recalls in both title and tone Sam Shepard’s black comedy True West) is set in the rural hamlet of Leenane on Ireland’s western shore. Although a small town, Leenane is teeming with violence. “It’s the murder capital of Ireland,” the parish priest Father Welsh (Luigi Sottile) bemoans, a conclusion that’s difficult to argue with.

An economically and spiritually deprived backwater, in Leenane dogs have their ears hacked off, villagers drown themselves, murderers run free, and a negative comment about a man’s hairstyle is grounds for having your head blown off with a shotgun.

Even by Leenane’s standards brothers Valene (Ross Beschler) and Coleman (Anthony Lawton) seem particularly sadistic. Proving that familiarity breeds contempt, they know how to push each other’s buttons as only siblings can, and never tire of abusing one another verbally and physically. The possessive Valene (who inherited everything following the death of their father) taunts his brother with his wealth. The less-nuanced Coleman responds by repeatedly destroying his brother’s possessions. With a shotgun on the wall and a kitchen full of knives, it seems only a matter of time before the brothers act out their own murderous version of Cain and Abel.

In one of the play’s rare moments of calm, the brothers resolve to stop fighting. Their apologies for past cruelties are initially sincere, but their confessions soon turn into a competition to tear open wounds that have festered since childhood.

Shrewdly paced by director David O’Connor, the four-member cast executes its roles superbly. Like conjoined twins at once desperate to separate and afraid to be alone, Valene and Coleman are simultaneously repulsed by and drawn to each other. Beschler and Lawton are excellent in capturing this dichotomy, and their portraits of two brothers who are more alike than they’d care to admit carries the production.

In the supporting but essential role of Father Welsh, Sottile effectively communicates the priest’s crisis of faith and deep sense of inadequacy when he realizes he’s lost control of his unruly flock. And in her Lantern debut Genevieve Perrier is superb as the insightful moonshine peddler Girleene.

A fantastically compelling investigation of spiritual, familial and communal isolation, McDonagh’s coarse, obscenity-laden language is surprisingly poetic and at times wildly funny. If you’re looking for a night of full-throttle entertainment, the Lantern’s well-rendered production delivers the goods.

The Lonesome West
Through Oct. 14. $15-$30. St. Stephen’s Theater, 10th and Ludlow sts. 215.829.0395. www.lanterntheater.org

footlights

Hot Shots

The Arden Theatre Company begins its 20th anniversary season with artistic director Terrence J. Nolen’s imperfect but powerful staging of John Weidman and Stephen Sondheim’s musical Assassins.

Focusing on nine individuals who’ve either attempted or succeeded in assassinating a president of the United States, the remarkably relevant 1990 musical shows us an America in which fame can be bought with a gun.

Emphasizing the show’s gallows humor, Nolen’s production takes an inordinate amount of time to develop, and while some cast members shine (James Sugg is especially entertaining as the eccentric Charles Guiteau), others struggle with the complexities of Sondheim’s musical composition. But once the production discovers its footing, the effect is chilling.

In the powerful final scene, John Wilkes Booth (Jeffrey Coon in an indelible performance) reasons that while murder is “tawdry,” assassination is a ticket to immortality. “They will hate you with a passion,” he promises a hesitant Lee Harvey Oswald (the effective Ben Dibble). There’s some truth to Booth’s reasoning. Kennedy was assassinated and the entire world mourned. But in Philadelphia, with its hundreds of murders, the fallen are remembered by a relative few.

The presidential stalkers we encounter onstage in Assassins are mentally unbalanced, but are they any more insane than a gun-happy culture that allows violence to continue unabated? (J.C.R.) >> Through Oct. 21. $29-$45. Arden Theatre Company, 40 N. Second St. 215.922.1122. www.ardentheatre.org