Left - Sandra Stockley & Patrick Connolly. Cover - Michael Gupta & Maggie Blinco. Photos - Fiona KingSet entirely in the grimy kitchen and living room of a tiny house in western Ireland, a small collection of characters gathers. Maureen is a single woman who is no longer all that young, having spent the last twenty years of her prime resentfully caring for her difficult elderly mother Mag. Whether it’s solely because of the toxic relationship with her mother or for some other reasons as well, Maureen is increasingly a recluse from the outside world. And while Mag does nothing but complain and harass her, Maureen has spitefully taken to escalating acts of retaliation. However it got this way, there is clearly a vicious cycle at work, and one that appears to have maintained an equilibrium – however precarious – for some time. Enter into the mix expat Pato, an old beau of Maureen’s who’s still interested, and the delicate balance between put-upon daughter and dependant mother is upturned. For all their horrendous yet seemingly harmless bickering, there are darker currents coming to the fore.
Although comic and tragic, Martin McDonagh’s highly successful first play The Beauty Queen of Leenane is a piece which is such a collision of drama, humour, pathos, and naturalism that it would be an oversimplification to label it a tragicomedy. Unlike the content of some of his later plays, such as the outrageous bloodletting of his Tarantinoesque The Lieutenant of Inishmore or his imaginative and highly disturbing fantasy The Pillowman, this is a far quieter, subtler piece, albeit one with more than a hint of the same sinister impulses. If anything, it’s closer to a kitchen-sink drama (quite literally) that has been laced with both some funny moments and some very dark ones, and yet the two do not combine to form black humour per se.
In fact, the degree of mirth or moroseness that one takes from the production will undoubtedly correspond to each observer’s personal baggage, particularly when it comes to troubled, manipulative relationships with – and especially between – mothers and daughters, as well as problems of loneliness and instability. Whether you find this a slow play, an engrossing play, a mostly funny or a predominantly confronting play will be especially a result of what you bring with you into your viewing of this potentially unsettling story.
Predominantly dialogue-driven and written in a thick Irish idiom, this is a strong script but very much an actor’s play to pull off or to let flounder. Fortunately this production, although modest in budget, does a largely excellent job of bringing this drama to life. Directed with economy by countryman Maeliosa Stafford, a strong cast of four work together to create a moody, tense atmosphere that services the play well, not to mention each having a fine command of the accent, cadence and (to our ears) peculiar syntax.
Sandra Stockley is very strong as Maureen, portraying the alternately embittered and fragile “old maid” with a flouncing, acerbic manner. Coupled with a real cruelty, this plays to the script’s strengths, giving the character an ambiguous sympathy. Patrick Connolly is also very good as her would-be lover Pato, in an earnest and sensitive performance as probably the only wholly rational, likeable character in the piece.
Particularly excellent was the venerable Maggie Blinco as Mag who, much like her “daughter”, displays layers of subtlety with her role that allow this meddlesome, vindictive old woman to appear both threatening and pathetic, repellent yet pitiable. It is an intriguing performance in which Blinco more than once has the audience in the palm of her hand.
Rounding out the cast is Michael Gupta as Pato’s younger brother Ray, a wonderfully well-drawn character consumed with the petulance of perpetual immaturity, a selfish and pathologically impatient fool that is the closest the play comes to overt comic relief. Although his accent work was perhaps the weakest by a small measure, Gupta nevertheless captures his role with such perfectly-pitched fervor as to constantly steal moments of limelight without ever making off with the scenes.
With an effective (if slightly wobbly) set that matches the play for stark naturalism and a talented group of artists performing on it, this production of The Beauty Queen of Leenane is a strong, provoking night of bleak familial strife.
Wildfire Theatre presents
The Beauty Queen Of Leenane
by Martin McDonagh
Directed by Maeliosa Stafford
Venue: Seymour Centre, Downstairs Theatre
Season: 19 March – 4 April 2009
Times: 8pm Wed-Sat; 2pm Sat 28 March
Tickets: $35 adults/ $30 concession
Bookings: 02 9351 7940
