The Beauty Queen of Leenane

‘The Beauty Queen of Leenane’, the critically acclaimed, 1996 very dark comedy is part of the Leenane Trilogy. Despite having no formal training, ‘The Beauty’ won for its 25-year-old Irish playwright, Martin McDonagh, the London Evening Standard Award for the Most Promising Playwright prize.

Born to a construction worker and a housekeeper in 1970, in north London, Martin worked as a supermarket shelf stacker, and then for the Department of Trade and Industry as a part-time administrative assistant.

After years of meagre living, he wrote a couple of radio plays, which weren’t produced, but he learnt the gift of writing dialogue. When this play was published, wild man McDonagh became a prominent literary figure. The play received six Tony Award nominations and won four. For this play, he also received the 1998 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play, and he was nominated for the BBC Play of the Year award at the Olivier Awards. At one award ceremony, Martin and his brother, being the worse for drink and exchanged insults with Sean Connery – the resulting tabloid headline was ‘Irish Writer curses Bond.’  

This play premiered in the Town Hall Theatre in Galway, before having long runs in London's West End and Broadway.

Now, The Irish Theatre Players are proud to present their two and a quarter hour production at The Irish Club, 61 Townsend Road, Subiaco each night at 8.00 until the 19^th November. There is one matinee on Sunday 13^th at 3.00 pm.

       The semi-biographical story is set in 1989 in Leenane (pronounced leh-nan), a backwater village in the west of Ireland near Galway.

      The curtains open to show the Folan’s murky and decrepit kitchen. The rain is pouring outside, the front door swings open and in staggers Maureen (Denice Byrne). She is a 40-year-old virgin who, despite a history of mental illness, reluctantly cares for her demanding and manipulative mother, Mag (Siobhan Wright). 70-year-old Mag keeps poor Maureen hopelessly ensnared in a heartbreaking, dysfunctional relationship of hatred. Mag’s other daughters have escaped the claustrophobic existence to relative normality.

      Their only visitors are the Dooleys. Ray (Kevin Chan) is on the dole and is an expert on the ‘shite’ soapies. His much older brother, construction worker, Pato (Bernard McCreesh) has just returned from a lonely existence working in England. Will Pato whisk Maureen away - as far as possible - to freedom? Or will Maureen continue to be her mother’s patsy?

In today’s plays, where all too often the ending is all sweetness, it is a refreshing change to see the raw life that was the norm only a couple of decades ago. I smiled as Maureen told Pato of the racist abuse she received whilst employed as a cleaner in England, as only this week a local politician has been called racist for calling an Irish colleague a Leprechaun.

This is director, Ginger Milne’s first endeavour at directing a full length play. She has done admirably; the pace was very good, although there were a few prompts required (I saw the first night performance). However, the chemistry between the cast members was very good. Siobhan, as the miserable mother, was excellent and had the audience cringe and gasp in unison at one of Mag’s peculiarities!

The lighting was above average, but techies Steven Grant and Sean Haining, were fighting against a new sound desk which at the beginning gave poor sync for actions such as switching on the radio or TV. By the end of the play the sound effects and stability of the volume had been conquered.

The set gave just the right atmosphere of a neglected bog Irish cottage. Good props.

With McDonagh's mature and unsettling style of writing, this extremely funny, dark drama is suitable for 14 year olds and over. Another success for the Irish Club.