The grotesque in the plays of Enda Walsh

This article attempts to outline the aesthetic of Enda Walsh's dramatic oeuvre, viewing it as fundamentally grotesque. Plays such as The New Electric Ballroom, The Walworth Farce, and Penelope have generally enjoyed a most enthusiastic reception; however, reviewers and critics have remained largely baffled as to where exactly these intoxicating pieces have left them. A plausible way of addressing the distinctive combination of citationality, the intermingling of genres, linguistic brilliance, circuitous structure, pathological interaction between characters, and the darkest humour, may consist in juxtaposing Walsh's technique with concepts of the grotesque as outlined, alternately, by Mikhail Bakhtin and Wolfgang Kayser. The consequent observations on the grotesque in Walsh's plays are followed by a query as regards the moral dimension of Walsh's aesthetic, focusing on their position in relation to Bakhtin's assertion of the liberating potential of the grotesque as opposed to Kayser's insistence on the grotesque coming across as essentially bleak and hopeless.