Beauty Queen of Leenane
Beauty Queen of Leenane
Posted: 20 Sep 2009
The Beauty Queen of Leenane – Gala, Durham
It was only a short holiday ten years ago but I still yearn for Connemara, a beautiful, beguiling and isolated region in the wild west of Ireland.
And so does Pato Dooley, the would-be lover of Maureen, in his eyes the beauty queen of Leenane, a typical Connemara village. Trouble is, when he returns from his soulless life in London to the supposed rural idyll he wants to be anywhere else. He’s outgrown his home area where everybody knows your business and looks for an escape route. He finds it, in the shape of a job and new life in Boston USA and asks Maureen to join him.
The nub of the play is whether this 40-something spinster will grab her last chance of love and happiness or remain trapped looking after her manipulative old mother Mag who seems to be pulling all the strings.
Mag scuppers her daughter’s chances of an outside life at every turn, burning letters and failing to pass on messages. The claustrophobic living room where all the action is set has a telephone mast outside the window, suggesting a possible connection with the outside world, but one which it seems is out of reach.
Martin McDonagh’s award-winning play first appeared in January 1996 but it nods to JM Synge whose Playboy of the Western World took an unblinkered view of elements of rural Irish life and caused riots when it was first staged almost 90 years ago.
Back in Leenane, pity for Maureen is tempered as the plot unfolds and the audience sees her casually torturing her mother by burning her hands. When Mag’s lifeless body later appears, murdered by Maureen, it still shocks.
But even this extreme act doesn’t make her escape, and she remains in Leenane, a carbon copy of her mother, trapped by her own mind as much as her circumstances.
The intimate theatre at the Gala is ideal for plays like this with simple sets, small casts and febrile atmospheres. But the absence of theatrical pyrotechnics means there is nothing for actors to hide behind and really puts pressure on them to deliver spot-on performances.
So hats off to each member of the cast of four, each of whom excelled: Carole Dance as Mag was by turns infuriating and pathetic, Paul Boyle as Pato a totally believable middle-aged swain, taking his last-chance opportunities eagerly but with mature consideration and Alan DeVally as Pato’s young brother a model of impatient youth, struggling with showing respect to elders he clearly despises.
But Alice Selwyn as Maureen stole the show, moving from sulky resentment to callous brutality, from unashamed sexuality to past-it acceptance of her lot. At each stage you felt drawn into her world. When she appeared in her underwear, flaunting her dalliance with Pato in front of Mag I felt like an intruder, not a passive member of he audience.
This was a touring production from London Classic Theatre. I look forward to their next visit.
AG
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