Sir, - I am amazed that the Leenane Trilogy - a hotchpotch of rural stereotypes and slapstick - is hailed as the bright new work in Irish theatre. On the night I saw it I was deeply depressed that the audience was so lacking in critical faculties that they gave this mediocrity a standing ovation.
How can we account for the Father Ted phenomenon, of which the Leenane Trilogy is an extension? Even if one could argue that there is value in stereotype if it points out useful things about ourselves, I don't see how the naïve bogman stereotype really applies these days. I would be much more interested to see something closer to the bone, like a send-up of executive Ireland complete with flash cars, pretensions of culture and the ubiquitously intrusive mobile phone.
Our eagerness to accept simplistic and comfortably unreal images of ourselves suggests a gaping lack of real self-analysis. - Yours, etc.,
Burlington Gardens, Dublin 4.