THE BEAUTY QUEEN OF LEENANE. To 25 February.

Watford

THE BEAUTY QUEEN OF LEENANE
by Martin McDonagh

Palace Theatre To 25 February 2006
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat Wed 2pm & Sat 3pm
Audio-described 25 Feb 3pm
Stagetext 28 Feb 3pm
Talkback 14 Feb
Runs 2hrs One interval

TICKETS: 01923 225671
www.watfordtheatre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 8 February

All gall in Galway in vivid revival.
Martin McDonagh cunningly shakes up cosy Irish peasant drama here, creeping up on safe expectations before knocking them for six with a couple of typical violent McDonagh moments post-interval.

Initially, director Kirstie Davis is too hurried. Later, she cheats on old Mag Folan’s last scene by using darkness. And the realism of Jessica Curtis’s cottage set is marooned on the wider stage, losing some points, though atmospherically allowing a mud wall to transform to sludge when rain falls during the final scenes.

But this finely-acted production becomes increasingly absorbing. Old Mag is desperate to keep her 40-year old daughter Maureen, the title’s Beauty Queen, looking after her, despite the pair’s mutual dislike. Mag leads the conversations. Maureen, striding like a hard-working woman used to farm terrain, gives minimal answers, throwing lines away in conversations she’d rather not be having.

Eileen Pollock’s crafty old woman in her corner rocking-chair laughs to herself at her secret plots, or pretends interest in what’s by her chair and in her bag to keep a local likely lad unaware she’s obsessed by a letter he’s brought for her daughter.

As that teenage Ray, Andrew Macklin’s rural delinquency has a comic naivety expressed in head-banging impatience and direct emotional expression, driven mad by Mag’s deliberate chair-squeaking. Connor Byrne gives his much older brother, Maureen’s brief lover, a rough tenderness that becomes comic eagerness to please when Mag discovers him in the brusque daylight coming from her daughter’s bedroom.

Cate Hamer’s Maureen is a forceful impersonation of frustration and dreamy aspiration catalysed by mental instability to disastrous results. Occasionally speaking too fast for clarity, Hamer’s Maureen can switch in a mental instant between smiling fantasies and deliberate cruelty, kicking her mother into her chair. Mind and imagination part company with reality when dull routine is broken by romantic hopes.

As music’s very faintly heard from Pato’s leaving party, Maureen tries to comfort herself and appear unconcerned he’s apparently not invited her. When the true reason for not receiving an invitation dawns on her, book-reading and smiles quickly give way to angry desperation. It’s a fearful, powerful sight.

Mag Folan: Eileen Pollock
Maureen Folan: Cate Hamer
Ray Dooley: Andrew Macklin
Pato Dooley: Connor Byrne

Director: Kirstie Davie
Designer: Jessica Curtis
Lighting: Natasha Chivers
Sound: James Drew
Voice Coach: Sally Hague
Assistant director: Gemma Kerr

2006-02-13 01:34:57