THE CRIPPLE OF INISHMAAN.

"every fella has to make a try for something - else why be alive at all?"

The only writer to have had four plays running in London's West End at the same time, Martin McDonagh is the most original, seriously pertinent Anglo-Irish playwright to have emerged in years.

Set in a remote island off the west coast of Ireland in 1934, The Cripple of Inishmaan is a grandly comic tale in the great tradition of Irish storytelling.

In the depths of the Great Depression, news reaches the isolated community of Inishmaan that Hollywood director Robert Flaherty is coming to the neighbouring island of Inishmore to film Man of Aran. The one person who wants to be in the film more than anybody is young Cripple Billy, an unloved boy whose chief occupation has been staring at cows and yearning for a girl who wants no part of him, if only to break away from the tedium of his daily life.

"This is a hysterical, smart, wicked, wildly original work." - Newsday

"Mr McDonagh is destined to be one of the theatrical luminaries of the 21st century." - The New Republic