Home
MARTIN McDONAGH
Must Rock & Roll Playwright
AGE 36
WHY HIM 'Tis a celebrated playwright he is, chronicling the rural Irish and
other tortured souls. The Lieutenant of Inishmore, a ghoulish comedy
about a psychotic IRA wannabe, copped him his fourth Tony nomination,
after The Beauty Queen of Leenane (1998), The Lonesome West (1999), and
The Pillowman (2005). Not that he's stage-bound: In March, he won an
Oscar for the strangers-on-a-train short Six Shooter.
HIS DARK MATERIALS Despite dwelling on matricide, child murders, and the mechanics of
dismemberment, ''I'm not really interested in freaking people out, though
it may seem that way sometimes.''
WRITE TURN Raised in scruffy East London by Irish-emigrant parents, McDonagh held a
lot of crap jobs and cashed a lot of government-assistance checks before
churning out rough drafts for seven plays in a nine-month period in
1994. All but one have since been refined and staged.
SCANDALOUS 'EVENING' The night he was to accept London's Evening Standard prize for Most
Promising Playwright in 1996, McDonagh got tanked on vodka, dissed the
Queen, and — when Sean Connery asked him to pipe down — told James Bond to
f--- off. ''[In England] it's probably what I'm most famous for, even
more than the plays. I can't remember half the incident — I was that
drunk. It's nothing I've really worried about since. That's the kind of
thing a young playwright should be doing. It should be rock & roll.''
WHY HE WON'T FILM HIS PLAYS ''You should pick your art form and go for it.''
NEXT Directing In Bruges, his original feature-film script about a hitman
spindled by guilt.
BRÍAN F. O'BYRNE
Must 'City' Slicker
AGE 38
WHY HIM Season to season, there's no young Broadway actor more reliable or
well-reviewed. A four-time Tony nominee — and winner for portraying a
murderous pedophile in 2004's Frozen — the Irish actor (first name:
BREE-un) currently stars in the mystery Shining City.
FATHER FIGURE O'Byrne played a priest in last year's Best Picture Oscar winner
(Million Dollar Baby) and Best Play Tony winner (Doubt). ''My joke was
I'm not going to play any more priests — bishops from now on.''
Incidentally, his City character is...an ex-priest.
EASY RIDER O'Byrne's offstage obsessions? The New York Mets and his motorcycle, a
BMW R1200C; he keeps a photo of the bike on his cell phone. ''Most people
have kids or dogs.''
NEXT He's in City until July 16, then Tom Stoppard's Coast of Utopia trilogy
at Lincoln Center this fall.
A CHORUS LINE
Must Revival
WHY THIS The singular sensation — which opened in 1975 and ran for nearly 15 years
and 6,137 performances — is returning to Broadway.
DANCE 10, LOOKS 3 ''There's a generation that only saw the movie,'' says composer Marvin
Hamlisch of the 1985 flop. ''Now that can be taken care of.''
I CAN DO THAT! ''Nothing will change from the original,'' promises Hamlisch. Baayork Lee
(ACL's first Connie) will re-create Michael Bennett's choreography.
NEXT After tapping through San Francisco (July 23-Sept. 2), A Chorus Line comes home to NYC's Schoenfeld Theatre Sept. 18.
