TheatreWorks 2008 Company Initiative Program along with Tiny Dynamite Theatre present The Lonesome West.

The Lonesome West is the third installment in McDonagh's award winning Leenane trilogy. It tells the story of two brothers, Coleman and Valene Connor, living in Leenane, a small town in Connemara (County Galway, Ireland) fast becoming 'the murder capital of the world'.

The Connor brothers don't have much between them, just a small house in which they have lived all their lives and the tiny inheritance left by their father. They get joy from simple pleasures: drinking, exchanging jokes with a local foulmouthed schoolgirl (Girleen), mocking their parish priest (Father Welsh), swiping food at funerals, and fighting with each other. Especially fighting with each other. The chaos and conflict makes for an hysterical rollercoaster ride, with the occasional tender poignant moment.  Despite the best efforts of Father Welsh to bring the brothers to their senses, events descend to a thrilling climax.

The other plays in the trilogy, set in the same town, are the Tony Award winning The Beauty Queen of Leenane and A Skull in Connemara.  The story of The Lonesome West itself is self-contained, however – you don’t need to have seen the other plays to enjoy it.

The Lonesome West premiered in 1997 at the Druid Theatre Company in Galway, in a co-production with the Royal Court Theatre.  When the show hit London later that year, McDonagh became the first playwright since Shakespeare to have four works playing in London's West End in the same season. It later played on Broadway where it was nominated for a Tony Award in 1999.

This Melbourne premiere of The Lonesome West is directed by Gorkem Acaroglu, who last directed at TheatreWorks for The Habib Show.  She also directed a green room-nominated production of Sam Shepherd’s Fool for Love.  Of The Lonesome West, she says: “what drew me to this play were the weird, hysterical and dark Irish humour, and its timeless themes of forgiveness, loneliness and family conflict”.  

In the brand new company Tiny Dynamite Theatre, whose brief is to produce small-scale theatre with a big impact, she is joined by a bunch of young actors and designers, who have between them an impressive record of achievements in independent theatre; among them Ben Grant (The Glass Soldier) and Mark Tregonning (Gilgamesh). This is the first show by this brand spanking new company.