Martin McDonagh’s play, “The Pillowman,” which isn’t newly written but is new to Broadway, is receiving rave reviews from a wide range of American critics. I’m dubious about the acclaim. The grounds for my scepticism is slightly shaky—I’ve only seen one of McDonagh’s plays, “The Lonesome West,” a few years ago but I was taken aback. Taken aback by the disparity between the hosannas of pious praise and the Cro-Magnon playacting unfolding on stage. Commentators have compared McDonagh’s style to J.M.Synge-meets-David Mamet-meets-Quentin Tarantino. But the writers that this work about the violent antics of two brutish brothers actually brought to mind were Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson, purveyors of the cheerfully brainless and critically reviled sitcom Bottom. But such questioning of McDonagh’s talent does not get much of an airing in the U.S. press (except in an illuminating review by The Village Voice).For example, Hilton Als in The New Yorker unashamedly reproduces the following exchange from the �The Beauty Queen of Leenane”:Mag: Wet, Maureen?Maureen: Of course wet.Mag: Oh-h . . . I did take me Complan.Maureen: So you can get it yourself so.Mag: I can. (Pause) Although lumpy it was, Maureen.Maureen: Well, can I help lumpy?Mag: No.Maureen: Write to the Complan people so, if it�s lumpy.Mag: (Pause) You do make me Complan nice and smooth. (Pause) Not a lump at all, nor the comrade of a lump. I suppose your estimation of McDonagh’s plays might depend on whether, like Als, you see that “[i]t’s the �comrade of a lump� that makes this scene vibrate with McDonagh�s hard poetry” or you look at the above exchange as a ripe slice of fabricated Oirishness.