In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths’ writer/director Martin McDonagh has crafted a play (in the mid-’90s, admittedly) that scrutinizes a close-knit rustic Irish community, its occupants, their intimacies and the deception that they swim in. In this up-to-the-minute production, they’ve cast The Woman in Black actor Radcliffe in an attempt to bring in a fresh audience, and it’s certainly worked. The latter’s countenance is everywhere you look and it’s clear that he is their main selling point, but looking past this it’s evident that The Cripple of Inishmaan could do just as well if Radcliffe was pulled from the mix. It’s a black comedy, and a very dark one at that.

McDonagh manages to interweave meaty slices of biting realism with droll humour all in the space of a few minutes. As an audience member it’s sometimes hard to get your head around the stark and unannounced change between themes. I’ve seen many a black comedy but The Cripple of Inishmaan is the fiercest I have come across.

Daniel Radcliffe is the eponymous character (although on certain occasions you feel he is actually underused) but The Cripple of Inishmaan is a group effort, an ensemble piece. Radcliffe has taken a role that is physically gruelling as he lurches around the stage with a copybook accent and tousled hair. His character, Billy, is one we can empathize with (even if the situation he’s in isn’t easily relatable); a local boy desperate to escape his life as the butt of the villagers’ jokes. He’s supported by Sarah Greene as the discordant Helen and Pat Shortt as the town’s busybody, Johnny Pateen whilst Ingrid Craigie and Gillian Hanna light up every scene as Billy’s surrogate mothers, the sisters Kate and Eileen.

The revolving stage set is a gorgeous circle split into three sections: a grocery store, a boatyard and a bedroom, the central axis gyrating when needs be. It’s very similar to the mise en scène in the recent production of The Playboy of the Western World (Inishmaan bearing similarities to J. M. Synge’s play through scenery and content) although more elaborate and not quite as convincing.

Martin McDonagh has created The Cripple of Inishmaan as a pastiche of rural Irish drama, and the cast are as stereotyped and archetypal as a box of crayons. There’s the loudmouthed moron; the permanently tipsy pensioner drowning in alcohol; the excitable youngster; the wanton young girl; the dotty shopkeepers and the hero, who is desperate to escape his life on the tiny island. Each character is an exaggerated version of the convention image.

The play really excels when it plays the humour up. Certainly it can be funny, oftentimes it is, but in many of the jokes there is a victim. You’ll probably find yourself laughing at something that is now politically incorrect. The play’s enjoyable with some great laughs but it’s a discrete but rather cruel-edged type of comedy.

To nitpick at the play, my only criticism would be that it’s almost too bleak in places, changing the tenor of it far too quickly. But aside from this, there are solid performances to be found, an engrossing plot and plenty of gags to keep you entertained.

Performed on Monday 8 July 2013 at the Noël Coward Theatre in London.