Powerful feckin' play
The Beauty Queen of Leenane
By Martin McDonagh
Directed by Ben Barnes
Starring Brenda Robins, Carolyn Hetherington, Daniel Giverin, Joe Cobden
Centaur Theatre
483 St-François-Xavier,
514-288-3161
Martin McDonagh is being treated something like the Quentin
Tarantino of the theatre world these days: called a renegade, the Bad Boy of Irish
Theatre, and many other of the cliches often employed in describing brash and talented
young men - all of which may not be surprising in this case, as 27-year old McDonagh
says the Pulp Fiction director, along with Martin Scorcese, Robert DeNiro, and David
Mamet, are his prime influences.
It's rarer, though when hype lives up to reality - but with The Beauty Queen of Leenane, McDonagh's first play (written when he was a mere 25) - it's true. First in his Leenane trilogy set in Ireland's Galway county, it's a stunning, powerfully written play, here given a strong imprint by director Ben Barnes and some wonderful performances throughout.
Both a drama and the blackest of comedies, it concerns the spiteful relationship
between a fortyish spinster and her aged, reproachful mother who kills the daughter's
one chance at love.
Daughter Maureen (Brenda Robins) is a 40-year old virgin, cooking and cleaning for
mother Mag (Carolyn Hetherington) in the run-down family home. Mag's two other daughters
are married and have little contact with Mommie Dearest, leaving Maureen reduced
to the status of drudge.
Carolyn Hetherington chews over the role of Mag like a bit of raw hide. Planted in her chair, the old crone darts withering looks at Maureen when she's unobserved, only really showing her toxic contempt when she's unfettered and alone - dumping the "yoo-rine" from her chamber pot over dirty dishes in the sink.
The sense is of a decades-long brush fire of tension and resentment between Maureen and Mag, and we tune in at the point where it has nearly come to a head. The appearance on the scene of local fellow Pato Dooley, and the possibility of escape for Maureen, is gasoline to the fire. The careful elaboration of the mother-daughter relationship in the first act gives way to scenes of havoc which had the audience gasping.
What makes the play so startling is its blending of old-fashioned theatricality - the plot hinges on an undelivered letter - and stark unsentimentality as it shows the casual cruelty people can inflict on one another.
McDonagh has said he wants viewers leaving his plays to feel the same charge and exhilaration as after a rock concert. For sure, the work is hard edged and shocking, but McDonagh hasn't forgotten the craft of nuanced writing. There's great depth here, exquisite dialogue, and lots of fine salty language: feckin' this and feckin' that - "feck" repeated like a despairing mantra.
Director Ben Barnes, former Resident Director of Ireland's Abbey theatre (where he will return as its Artistic Director following the Centaur run), has tuned the relationship between mother and daughter into a teetering balance of power. Where some productions featured a mousy Maureen cowed by the domineering and bitter Mag, Barnes instead made the daughter strong and sly. Brenda Robins portrayal of Maureen is frustration fastened down like a piano spring - the grimacing tension in her face seems almost ready to burst from her.
Audience immersion into the play is total and many, like myself, left the place feeling drained and shaky. Powerful fekin' stuff, that.
The Beauty Queen of Leenane plays at the Centaur until December 5.
- Neil Brouillet
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