By Clara Kumagai.
Anyone who has grown up in Ireland over the last three or four decades will find the set of ‘The Beauty Queen of Leenane’ vaguely familiar. The Aga range, the cooker, and the Flahavan’s Oats provide a detailed context for Martin
McDonagh’s prize-winning play.
Coming from an acclaimed run at the Young Vic, ‘The Beauty Queen’ is arguably one of McDonagh’s finest, and almost certainly the most famous. The absurdity of the rural Irish life portrayed reminds one sometimes of Father Ted (which is by no means a criticism). The humor is pitch black and occasionally – and literally – of the toilet variety.
McDonagh’s script twists and turns, defying one to predict what may happen next, and carries McDonagh’s trait of multiple versions of the ‘truth’. The audience was invested in the rollercoaster ride, in any case: the gasps and hisses very nearly culminated in a ‘he’s behind you!’ moment, before we all remembered we were grown-ups and in the Gaiety. However, pantomime-like as these reactions were, they were certainly not faked. Although it is often for his melodramatic style that McDonagh is criticized, there is no denying that it is a rare thing to elicit that kind of reaction from an audience.
Rosaleen Linehan is the real ‘Queen’; she dominates with her wonderfully terrible Mag, playing her with a natural touch that can be seen in every flick of her hand and rock of her chair. The relationship between her and Deirbhle
Crotty’s frustrated Maureen swings between different levels of vindictiveness and violence just as Crotty’s Maureen becomes pitiful and terrifying by turns.
The awkward and warming Pato Dooley, played by Frank Laverty, is the counterpoint to the complex bitterness of mother and daughter, though Johnny Ward’s Ray, who shrinks a little from the full depth and humour of his character, does not impress as much.
Ultz’s set is suitably decrepit and lit atmospherically and cleverly by Charles Balfour, but one wonders whether the Gaiety is perhaps a little too large to convey the claustrophobia of this Irish home. Indeed, some moments were
diluted somewhat in poignancy; try and avoid the nosebleed seats if you want to get the full power of Maureen’s trapped emotions and you will not regret it.
The timeless dolmens of Irish culture – Taytos, rain and the stale nature of Kimberly biscuits – provide the subject for much of the laughs, but these are adornments that belie the fact that McDonagh’s Ireland, absurd and dreadful as it is, is one that we still recognize. For, as Ray Dooley’s character reminds us, as he appears in trackie bottoms and a denim jacket, this was an Ireland only twenty years ago, just pre-Celtic Tiger. One wonders, in the Current Economic Climate, whether the feeling of desperation is not one that is becoming an unfortunately common feeling once more. Certainly the hope of escape sounds a resonant chord, as Maureen says: ‘Sure it’s Ireland, someone’s always leaving.’
Beneath the potty jokes shines McDonagh’s gold: the sadness, the frustration, and the violence of trapped human beings. It is the darkness of ‘Beauty Queen’ that makes one laugh all the harder – an Irish trait if ever there was one.
