Primarily viewed as traditionally crafted playwriting, harking back to predecessors such as Synge and JB Keane, this book asks whether we can consider McDonagh and his writing a postmodern phenomenon. This research attempts to provide answers to this question by examining McDonagh's plays, their production and their reception, through a frame provided by some of the ideas and concepts that are to the fore of postmodern theory. The specific play texts considered are The Cripple of Inishmaan and The Lonesome West.