Calvary – like limbo or, in a secular context, Coventry – can refer both to place and state of being. This ambiguity runs through John Michael McDonagh’s thriller/meditation set in a village on the spectacular west coast of Ireland. It begins with Fr James (Brendan Gleeson) hearing confession: a male voice through the grille tells of despair, following years of childhood abuse from a Catholic priest, now dead. The speaker, his own innocence stolen, now intends – in some act of random equalisation – to take another blameless life, that of Fr James himself in a week’s time. Killing a priest on a Sunday, “that would be a good one now” muses the unknown would-be assassin. And so the tone is set: dark, deep and sporadically comic.The prospective