Martin McDonagh’s plays are among the hardy perennials of Sydney’s theatre scene. Every couple of years, one will likely pop up somewhere, either on the mainstage (Sydney Theatre Company’s The Beauty Queen of Leenane being one recent example) or in the independent scene.

The Lonesome West, the final part of McDonagh’s ‘Leenane Trilogy’, has been persuasively staged in Sydney before (in Belvoir’s Downstairs Theatre), but that was way back in 2009. While the play has nothing pressingly topical to say, it’s certainly worthy of reexamination by a new generation of theatremakers – in this case Empress Theatre and director Anna Houston (producers of the superb David Ireland drama Cyprus Avenue in this venue in 2019).

Andre de Vanny in The Lonesome West. Photo © Saz Watson

The Lonesome West is set in 1997, but looking at the lives of recently orphaned brothers Coleman and Valene, you could be excused for assuming this is the rural west of Ireland a century or so ago. Things don’t change much in this part of the world, though, to be fair, schoolgirls are now allowed to play football and fancy vol-au-vents have become a staple...