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. Taking Sides - Ronald Harwood
2. Aladdin - John Crocker - Music & Lyrics by Eric Gilder
3. Little Gem - Elaine Murphy
4. Vita & Virginia - Eileen Atkins
   adapted from correspondence between Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West
5. Twelfth Night - William Shakespeare
6. Tom Paine - Paul Foster
7. Youth Theatre Double Bill - Will Averill: Cinderella: Or How Pipsqueak the Mouse Became a Stallion. 'Crinkley Bottom............' was devised in-house
8. Gormenghast - John Constable adapted from the novel by Mervyn Peake
9. This Story of Yours - John Hopkins
10. King John - William Shakespeare
11. Pygmalion - Bernard Shaw
12. Fallen Angels - Noel Coward
13. A Month in the Country - Ivan Turgenev - adapted into English by Emlyn Williams
14. Glengarry Glen Ross - David Mamet
15. A Midsummer Night’s Dream - William Shakespeare
16. A Vampire Story - Moira Buffini
17. Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass - Lewis Carroll - dramatised by Adrian Mitchell
18. The Odd Couple (female version) - Neil Simon
19. Antony and Cleopatra - William Shakespeare
20. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead - Tom Stoppard
21. Gaslight - Patrick Hamilton
22. Cymbeline - William Shakespeare
23. Iron - Rona Munro
24. Confusions - Alan Ayckbourn
25. Much Ado About Nothing - William Shakespeare
26. I Hate Shakespeare - Steph DeFerie
27. Moonlight and Magnolias - Ron Hutchinson
28. Lulu - Frank Wedekind, in a version by Peter Barnes
29. Macbeth - William Shakespeare
30. Whipping It Up - Steve Thompson
31. Harvey - Mary Chase
32. Happy Days - Samuel Beckett
33. Days of Wine and Roses - Owen McCafferty
34. Henry V - William Shakespeare
35. Arabian Nights - adapted by Dominic Cooke
36. Vincent in Brixton - Nicholas Wright
37. The Real Thing - Tom Stoppard
38. Titus Andronicus - William Shakespeare
39. An Inspector Calls - J. B. Priestley

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