Life is bloody gleeful in Inishmore these days. Bloody for them. Gleeful for us.

Irish playwright Martin McDonagh, who recently made his feature film debut with In Bruges, has long worked on a parallel track with comic violence auteur Quentin Tarantino, but The Lieutenant of Inishmore may be the platonic ideal of that connection. Directed by Chip Walton at Curious Theatre Company, the play is boisterously entertaining, if you don't mind your laughs preceded by gushers of cherry- red blood and flailing severed appendages.

The first comes from the cavity of a dead cat, held upside down so that the blood drops out in answer to the question, "Do you think he's dead, Donny?"

That cat, Wee Thomas, is the primary love connection in the life of Padraic, a rebel rejected by the IRA because he was too violent. He's living in a world where the dream of an independent Northern Ireland has been abstracted to the point that atrocities are committed without strategy and bloodletting is what fills the day.

In fact, we meet Padraic as he tortures a petty drug dealer, who is hung upside down from the ceiling. In one of the play's most comic scenes, the two negotiate as Padraic - played with wild eyes and deadpan speech by Gene Gillette - considers which of the dealer's (an equally funny Geoffrey Kent) nipples should be excised. Padraic's sadism is tempered by his genial warning of the dangers of sepsis and tetanus, not to mention his distraction at the news that Wee Thomas may be ill.

Terrified at home are Donny (Anthony Powell, funny but young for the role), Padraic's decidedly non-paternal father, and their neighbor Davey (Matt Zambrano), who discovered the dead cat in the road. Realizing the repercussions of a dead Wee Thomas, they set on a ludicrous route toward saving their own hides.

On the way, Mairead (Laura Jo Trexler) interferes as a pellet gun-wielding Anybodys manquee who dreams of joining the resistance and carries a schoolgirl's abiding love for Padraic.

As usual in McDonagh's work, violence is the soul of banality. Splinter groups form from splinter groups until they are just shreds of mercenary insanity wandering the countryside, including a trio led by Stephen Cole Hughes as an eye-patch-wearing, leather-coated sort of Irish S&M captain. Titles like lieutenant are handed out, but salaries are not.

Still, don't look for too much meaning in McDonagh; he's a writer with more style than substance. Walton wisely directs toward the comedy, which is pitch-perfect here, always hitting the butcher's drollery at just the right level.

Other elements are less consistent. While Hughes' costume is terrific, Zambrano is saddled with a wig so horrible it looks stolen from a Desperate Housewife, and Donny's home is in far better repair than the usual McDonagh housing (that shiny wood floor probably makes the blood easier to wash away between shows). Accents, too, are wide-ranging.

But for audiences with a tolerance for the macabre - not to mention dissection more vivid than televised autopsies - it's a speedy, hilarious event.

The Lieutenant of Inishmore

* Grade: B+

* When and where: 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays through April 19, Curious Theatre Company, 1080 Acoma St.

* Cost: $16 to $32

* Information: 303-623-0524