The Beauty Queen of Leenane

by Martin McDonagh
directed by Chris Hurles

This is the award-winning play which shot McDonagh to fame in 1996 at the age of twenty-five.

The Beauty Queen of Leenane is a blend of black comedy, melodrama, horror and bleak tragedy.  It is set in the claustrophobic atmosphere of a kitchen in a rural Irish cottage, in the early 1990s. 

Maureen Folan, a 40-year-old spinster, takes care of her 70 year-old selfish and manipulative mother, Mag.   While her sisters have escaped into marriage and family life, Maureen, with a history of mental illness, is trapped in a dysfunctional relationship with her mother.

In the course of the play, the Folan cottage is visited by the Dooley brothers. Pato is a middle-aged construction worker fed up with having to work in England and disappointed by the limitations and loneliness of his life. He is accompanied by his much younger brother, a non-threatening "bad boy", Ray.

The plot is full of deceptions, secrets and betrayals interspersed with twists which keep surprising the audience.

Saturday 10th to Saturday 17th April 2010
Performances at 7.45pm, except Sunday when the performance is at 4pm. Please note, there is no Saturday matinee for this production. There will be no performance on Wednesday 14th.

Other past productions

1. A Midsummer Night’s Dream - William Shakespeare
2. A Vampire Story - Moira Buffini
3. Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass - Lewis Carroll - dramatised by Adrian Mitchell
4. The Odd Couple (female version) - Neil Simon
5. Antony and Cleopatra - William Shakespeare
6. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead - Tom Stoppard
7. Gaslight - Patrick Hamilton
8. Cymbeline - William Shakespeare
9. Iron - Rona Munro
10. Confusions - Alan Ayckbourn
11. Much Ado About Nothing - William Shakespeare
12. I Hate Shakespeare - Steph DeFerie
13. Moonlight and Magnolias - Ron Hutchinson
14. Lulu - Frank Wedekind, in a version by Peter Barnes
15. Macbeth - William Shakespeare
16. Whipping It Up - Steve Thompson
17. Harvey - Mary Chase
18. Happy Days - Samuel Beckett
19. Days of Wine and Roses - Owen McCafferty
20. Henry V - William Shakespeare
21. Arabian Nights - adapted by Dominic Cooke
22. Vincent in Brixton - Nicholas Wright
23. The Real Thing - Tom Stoppard
24. Titus Andronicus - William Shakespeare
25. An Inspector Calls - J. B. Priestley

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