Blood and gore and cows shot between the eyes, oh my!

An enraptured if not-all-that-eloquent Gotham theater critic described Tony-award nominated "The Lieutenant of Inishmore" as "a comedy about political terrorism in rural Ireland." Uh-huh. And "The Lord of the Rings" was a fantasy about dudes on intersecting road trips.

"Inishmore" begins with a cat murder, ends with a surprise and spills more blood in between than a David Mamet daydream. Ultimately, it lampoons the absurdity of terrorism.

Scott Rogers liked the ultra-violent, wickedly funny Martin McDonagh production so much after catching it on Broadway, he bought the rights to direct it here. Rogers is an acting coach and president of The Academy of Film and Television, which is also the venue for "Inishmore."

We gave him Five Questions to figure out why.

"Inishmore" won five Tony nominations and some seriously positive reviews during its brief Broadway run last year. What did you dig about it enough to direct the thing?

I rarely get blown away by a show, pun intended. And this show blew me away.

Controversy is great. I love when people walk out of a theater arguing over a show. I think that's a big part of what theater should do. Because of the violent nature of this show, and the gore ... there's a lot of blood.

The people I was sitting near on Broadway literally started to get up to leave when the most gory scenes would happen ... then sit back down and continue to laugh. The laughter would overcome the repulsion or revulsion. Within five minutes any thought of leaving was gone.

That fascinated me.

Why should I — according to press materials for your production and the Broadway production — be thinking "Quentin Tarantino meets Monty Python" with "Inishmore"?

My impression is that it's more like Quentin Tarantino meets Neil Simon. Neil Simon is smarter ... his humor a little bit more intelligent. And with many of ("Inishmore's") one-liners, you think about them for a second and then you laugh.

The blood aspect is literally Tarantino. It's got more blood than any show I've ever seen. ... But there's a great deal of humor. It's really funny.

I've never seen a show this dramatically violent and yet this funny. It's smart humor.

Now that you've got me hooked, who else is this for and not for?

The twisted people of society is who it's for. It's not a show that you bring Grandma and the kids to see. ...

I will say (in reference to) the cat killings — of which there are a few and is referred to throughout the play — the Broadway production had the support of the ASPCA. (The production) did fundraisers and stuff for it.

One of my students ... is a voracious animal-rights advocate. Her first impression was, "What! Cat killings?" Now, she's not only in favor of the show, she's the head of our hemo lab.

She's in charge of making all of our blood.

Funny you should mention that hemo lab. ... Is that the reason you have a special-effects budget?

Before this show, I'd never seen anybody else realistically shot by a gun on stage. ... In the classic American theater, that's always done off stage. ...

This show doesn't shy away from those things. The special effects have to do with the blood, for sure.

We've designed our own way of doing it. Duane Stadden, our stage manager and one of our understudies, supervised the construction and the design of the mechanisms for the effects.

We have no money. So we're not doing any squibs (explosive devices). But we are catapulting blood around.

Duane found a way to make it electronic so we could rig it and trigger it off stage.

Is there a moral to all this bloodshed?

I think the message is really positive. It's an anti-terrorist, anti-cruelty message ...

One of the greatest lines in it, I think, is, "So all of this terror was for absolutely nothing." The (character) says it with such utter confusion, almost. And he's not talking about the play, really. He's talking about terrorism in general. In this day and age, (that's) really thought-provoking. ...

Terroristic violence doesn't do anything. It just creates more violence. ... Wouldn't it be great if we could figure that out in life?

Reach Derek Paiva at dpaiva@honoluluadvertiser.com.