By: Caroline Crawford at Bay City News Service
Martin McDonagh’s “Beauty Queen of Leenane,’’ which opened Tuesday at Marin Theatre Company, is an explosive, funny play that gets the Irish exactly.
The plot is not new: the beauty queen of the title is a forlorn middle-aged woman from Connemara, caretaker for an aging, cranky mother who lays guilt on her for every ailment and destroys her chance to find love.
This production gets the Irish exactly as well: The four characters under the direction of Mark Jackson deliver the language so compellingly one would swear they are fresh off the boat from the boat.
Beyond the language, Jackson goes to the black heart of McDonagh’s work, to the destructive mix of anger and desire that moves these characters. The mother Mag (Joy Carlin) is possessed of self-love and loathing for almost everyone else, Maureen (Beth Wilmurt) is obsessed with resentment and longs for love, Pato Dooley (Rod Knapp) is ready to offer that love, and Pato’s brother Ray (Joseph Salazar) is an edgy go-between who reveals some of the play’s dark secrets.
There is so much comedy in McDonagh’s writing that the darkness comes unannounced and catches us off-guard. McDonagh draws his characters with a broad brush--we are meant to know them with all their ragged edges and savagery.
We learn from Mag that Maureen has a history of mental illness and that she is fully capable of using it against her daughter to suit her ends. We learn from Maureen that her mother has health issues and that she is counting the days to the death that will set her free. Still, the chilling finale takes us by surprise--with McDonagh anything can happen.
MTC’s cast is uniformly strong, and Jackson’s staging allows the characters to develop without overdramatizing. Maureen’s longing is as much in the small gesture as in words as are Pato’s feelings for her, and Mag’s desperation plays even when she is silent.
Designer Nina Ball’s dreary cottage sets the scene persuasively for “Beauty Queen,’’a place where stale biscuits and Complan, a formula food for the old, are dished out and where a small television set on the floor in front of the rocking chair is the major amenity.
It is a stunning play in a stunning production.
“The Beauty Queen of Leenane’’ plays at Marin Theatre Company, Mill Valley, through June 16.
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