A Very Very Very Dark Matter (released in 2018) represents somewhat of a homecoming for playwright and filmmaker Martin McDonagh. For most of his career, McDonagh solely worked in theater. However, he has since released a number of films: his first in 2008, a second in 2012, and a third, 2016's Oscar-winning Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. A Very Very Very Dark Matter represents McDonagh's first play since 2015's Hangmen.
McDonagh's play tells the story of a small pygmy woman who is imprisoned by famed author Hans Christian Andersen so that she writes Andersen's books (including classics like The Little Mermaid and The Emperor's New Clothes). The pygmy woman lives inside of a box which Andersen makes smaller at a whim (to do this, he sometimes has to amputate some of the woman's body parts). At the end of the day, the two have a bad but interesting and sometimes comical relationship.
A Very Very Very Dark Matter was first performed in October 2018 at the Bridge Theater in London. The Guardian liked the play, giving it 4 stars out of a possible 5 and writing that "Jim Broadbent is brilliantly buffoonish and sadistic in Martin McDonagh’s wildly inventive dismantling of the great Danish storyteller." Variety didn't particularly enjoy the play, writing that it is "A very, very, very damp squib" and that "Oscar nominee Martin McDonagh's new play examining the underbelly of colonialism misses the target."
