The Beauty Queen of Leenane
The Beauty Queen of Leenane by Martin McDonough, 18 March-4 April 2009; Downstairs Theatre Seymour Centre; Wildfire Theatre Company; Seymour Online or (02) 9351 7940 or visit www.wildfiretheatre.com
Cantankerous hardly begins to describe Mag Folan (Maggie Blinco) the elderly woman around whom this black, black tragi-comedy ebbs and flows. Add malign, sly, manipulative, selfish, mischievous and you’re getting there; but there’s sadness, loneliness and fear too, although she keeps them well out of sight. Then there’s the feckin’ aul bitch’s humour which makes this toxic mix curiously appealing – most of the time.
Mag lives in a wretched cottage on the mountain above Leenane in Connemara. She sits beside a potbelly stove in the kitchen and commands her 40-year-old daughter’s life from the depths of a rocking chair. The resentfully dutiful Maureen (Sandra Stockley) is doomed by custom to care for her mother following her two sisters’ escape to matrimony and anywhere but Leenane. The hatred between mother and daughter is shockingly funny – most of the time.
Martin McDonough’s play was written in 1998 and set in 1989. But Ireland’s late-blooming EU economic miracle would barely have reached far western Connemara and certainly not touched the Folans’ cottage, where a microwave oven is the only sign of the modern world. And although Mag stares at the telly all day, it’s at re-runs of The Sullivans, The Young and The Restless and A Country Practice while “just waiting for the news” – which never comes either.
The only visitor is the feckless village lad Ray Dooley (Michael Gupta) whose unreliability as a messenger is a key to the play’s gradual unwind towards tragedy and violence. When Pato (Patrick Connolly) returns briefly to Leenane from the labourer’s life in London, a spark of something lights the gloom for Maureen. Their fumbling one-night-stand could hardly be called “romance” unless you’re as starved of it as Maureen is; and it is more than quick easy sex, despite Mag’s morning-after lemon-lipped disapproval.
Inevitably however, Pato is a cruel ray of sunshine in Maureen’s drudge of a life and when his feckless younger brother Ray (Michael Gupta) proves as unreliable a messenger as most teenagers, he becomes the gormless catalyst of the play’s gradual unwind towards tragedy and violence.
McDonough is master of the Irish-bleak genre and this play is no exception. Its structure is beguiling and clever; the language is musical even though its syncopated rhythms are provided by “feck this” and “feck that”. Re-directed by Maeliosa Stafford after a 12-performance run last year at the Cell Block, it is subtle and absorbing to watch. The cast, led from the front by the formidable Blinco, draws the audience in with deceptive charm and laughter, but it isn’t long before the noisome chill inside matches the incessant rain outside the cottage. These are people whose few small hopes of a halfway decent life have long been lost – possibly generations before. And the dead hope has curdled into loathing.
As with most things in life, however, not all is as it seems and McDonough is not obvious in his choices. If the above sounds uninviting and unrelentingly gloomy – it isn’t. It’s way too clever, too entertaining, too intriguing and finally – too well done as a production. Barry French’s set design – of the cottage kitchen-living room – is a wondrously detailed and gruesomely grotty space. It’s lit with lovely touches and sensibility by Martin Kinnane.
Maggie Blinco’s performance is sustained, irresistible, rich and by turns horribly hilarious and horribly chilling. Independent theatre is fortunate that she’s willing to take on these demanding and challenging roles (viz Kiss Me Like You Mean It at the Old Fitzroy last year). Sandra Stockley is similarly whole-hearted in her depiction of the hopelessly hopeful and damaged Maureen; and Patrick Connolly is beautiful as the ill-educated man whose heart and dreams remain alive.
Wildfire is to be congratulated on staging the play and in taking it into the Seymour Centre’s small theatre – where it ought to pick up an appreciative audience. Its awfully good.
