Perceptions of playwright and director Martin McDonagh, in Ireland at least, occupy a strange and unfortunate place. As regards many second generation Irish, we can be as ambivalent about them as they are about us. When he achieves successes, such as when he won an Academy award for Best Live Action Short Film or when he received a Best Original Screenplay Academy Award nomination for 'In Bruges' in 2008, we hail him as one of our own.

When we don't like his portrayal of Ireland or the Irish in his plays or films, we think of him as English; 'shur, what does he know, he has hardly lived here!'

A new production of McDonagh's first play 'The Beauty Queen of Leenane' premiered in Cork this week. Starting as he meant to continue, the tale is the tragicomic story of a raw grudge match between a brooding mother and her spinster daughter. In a surprising trajectory, it launched in a small venue in Galway and eventually ended up on Broadway, retaining the same throughout the run. McDonagh was only 27 years old when he directed the play.

Michael Cabot is the director bringing the new production to Cork for its first show. He is in a difficult position; that of an Englishman bringing a controversial play about Irish characters, written by an Irishman born in England, back to Ireland! Dangerous territory, I would have thought?

London Classic Theatre tries to produce challenging, accessible drama for audiences in London and farther afield. As well as presenting a range of popular, modern classic drama with productions such as 'Look Back in Anger', 'Entertaining Mr Sloane' and 'Abigail's Party', they have staged new translations of two eighteenth century comedies, and have produced the UK premiere of Hugh Leonard's 'Love in the Title'.

"2002 was the first time we toured Ireland and developed contacts there. We started to look further afield since we established ourselves as a viable entity. We toured 'Abigail's Party' in Ireland a few years ago and the Irish audiences seemed to know it better than English audiences," Cabot points out.

"'The Beauty Queen of Leenane' is a fairly timeless piece. It's set in rural Connemara but could have happened anywhere. It features a cranky 70-year-old woman and the spinster daughter who takes care of her. The only contact they have with the outside world is through the TV, which shows Aussie soap operas. The mother is virtually immobile and there is a real sense of claustrophobia about the play," he says.

What does the Englishman think of the controversy stirred up by McDonagh in Ireland? "Martin has such a distinctive voice. He is criticised for almost writing stereotypes but the characters are too well drawn and well written for that to be true. The play just wouldn't work if they were caricatures. The true test is, do the they stand up in Ireland?"

I asked the director about how different crowds give entirely different reactions to the same play. "In somewhere like Oldham the reaction would be much more enthusiastic than in London.