The Lieutenant of Inishmore, a play by Martin McDonagh, was first produced in 2001 by the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon before moving to the Garrick Theatre in London’s West End. In 2006, the play premiered Off-Broadway (winning the Obie and Lortel Awards) and then on Broadway, where it won a Tony nomination for Best Play. McDonagh is a British-Irish playwright and screenwriter who is well-known for his absurdist, farcical, black-comedy style and his early plays about Ireland. The Lieutenant of Inishmore is the second play in his Aran Islands Trilogy, which begins with The Cripple of Inishmaan (1997) and ends with The Banshees of Inisherin, which was unpublished and unproduced on stage but was adapted as a 2022 film starring Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell.

Of McDonagh’s plays, The Lieutenant of Inishmore is arguably his most controversial. It was written in response to the Warrington bombings in 1993, in which the Irish Republican Army (IRA) detonated two bombs that injured 56 people and killed two young children. As a proponent of a free, decolonized Ireland, McDonagh was outraged at the violence that paramilitary organizations were committing ostensibly in his name. McDonagh wrote from, as he described, a perspective of “pacifist rage,” darkly lampooning paramilitary violence through the main character, “Mad” Padraic, who has been deemed too radical for even the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA).

This study guide references the text and pagination of the 2001 edition of the play, published by Methuen Drama.

Content Warning: This play includes depictions of explicit violence, torture, gunshots, murder, blood, anti-gay language, and the graphic killing of cats.

Plot Summary

Donny and Davey are, as they say, “fecked up” (10). Davey, a 17-year-old boy, finds Donny’s cat, Wee Thomas, dead by the road and brings him the body. But Donny was only watching the cat for his son, “Mad” Padraic, who is away killing and torturing for the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA). Wee Thomas was Padraic’s best friend, and Padraic is known for his short temper and depraved taste for violence. Despite accusations, Davey swears he didn’t kill the cat with his bike. Donny decides to break the news to Padraic slowly by saying at first that the cat is sick, then progressing to the information that the cat has died.

He calls Padraic, interrupting him while he is torturing a small-time drug dealer. To Donny’s chagrin, Padraic immediately resolves to rush home to tend to his sick kitty. Panicked, Davey goes out in search of a black cat to take Wee Thomas’s place. He meets his younger sister, Mairead, who is a self-trained sharpshooter and dreams of joining the INLA. She argues that cats—like her cat, Sir Roger—have unique personalities, and they’ll never get away with it.

The siblings encounter Christy on the road, a mysterious man with one eye who claims that he saw Davey hit and kill the cat, although Davey insists desperately that he didn’t. Back at Donny’s house, Davey has brought the only cat he could find, Sir Roger. But Sir Roger isn’t black like Wee Thomas, so Davey suggests that they cover him in shoe polish.

Meanwhile, Christy joins up with Brendan and Joey, all members of the INLA. They reveal that they killed the cat as a ploy to lure Padraic home. They plan to kill him because Padraic is trying to form a splinter group, and his violence toward drug dealers is also cutting into the INLA’s piece of the drug profits. They leave, but Mairead enters, having overheard everything.

Padraic, traveling toward his cat, discovers Mairead on the road. She flirts, adding that she has a message for him, but Padraic comments that he thought she was a boy. She wants to join the INLA, but he insists that girls aren’t allowed unless they’re pretty. Padraic demands her message, his temper flaring when she’s coy. Instead of reporting about the three men, Mairead says that his cat is feeling better but to hurry home. With joy, Padraic kisses Mairead, and the kiss intensifies.

It’s five in the morning, and Donny and Davey decide to sleep. The cat is only half-polished, and Davey swears he will wake up on time at nine. But the scene shifts, and it’s noon. Padraic enters, excited to see his cat, but he sees the half-painted Sir Roger and shoots him. Davey and Donny admit that they found Wee Thomas dead on the road, and Padraic ties them up to kill them for the cat’s death. He hits Davey until he confesses (falsely) to killing the cat.

Before Padraic can kill his father and the neighbor boy, Christy, Joey, and Brendan enter. They greet each other happily until Padraic discovers why they’re there. The three men take Padraic out to shoot him, but Mairead shows up and shoots their eyes out. Padraic shoots Joey and Brendan in the head and Christy in the chest. He goes back to the task of killing Donny and Davey, but Christy, dying, apologizes for killing Wee Thomas.

Time passes, and Christy is now tortured and dead. Padraic is forcing Donny and Davey to dismember and dispose of their bodies, and Mairead and Padraic are in love, planning to start an INLA splinter group and get married. Padraic admits to Mairead that he killed a cat, but the cat was dirty, and Mairead decides that’s all right. But when Mairead discovers that the cat Padraic killed was in fact Sir Roger, she shoots Padraic for killing her cat.

She leaves Donny and Davey to finish with the bodies, deciding that killing is boring and she won’t join the INLA. Alone together in the bloody, gore-filled room, Donny and Davey are shocked when a black cat, the real Wee Thomas, wanders in, alive and well. They consider killing him, but they decide that there has been enough violence and feed him instead.