The Beauty Queen of Leenane: “A beautiful darkness” – Kilkenny People Review
The following review was published by Tess Felder in the Kilkenny People newspaper on Friday 27th of November 2009. The above photo was taken by Colm Gray.
“MUSIC is the space between the notes,” wrote the composer Claude Debussy, and he could easily have been referring to the Watergate Productions’ Beauty Queen Of Leenane which is on the local stage nightly until Saturday.
The play by Martin McDonagh, of In Bruges and The Cripple Of Inishmaan fame, centres on a 40-year-old woman and her cantankerous elderly mother who live together in a cottage in rural Ireland in the 1980s. As the woman, Maureen Folan (Claire Henriques) comes face to face with a chance-in-a-lifetime romance, her mother Mag (Mary Cradock) does all in her power to block the opportunity, afraid that her daughter’s success in love would leave the elderly woman either alone or put into a nursing home.
Maureen’s love interest, Pato Dooley (Brendan Corcoran), a somewhat shy but honest man home briefly from England, communicates his love via a letter to be delivered by his youngest brother, Ray (Ross Costigan), whose boredom and occasional laziness can get in the way of him doing the right thing.
As can be expected, the Watergate crew have pulled out all the stops for this production under the direction of Gerry Cody, with impressively realistic effects and a wonderful but simple set.
The four actors deliver their lines adeptly, and yet – crucially – much is left unsaid, the unspoken arguments and at times affection passing wordlessly between them. Mary Cradock is a perfectly crotchety old woman, shouting orders for tea and porridge at whoever happens to be in the room with her, while Claire Henriques manages to convey both the warm longing and the cold cruelty the character possesses, changing demeanour in an instant when turning her attention from Pato to her mother.
Brendan Corcoran meanwhile presents Pato as a genuine man, working hard to make a living for himself and do right by the people in his life. He is particularly good as a steady middle ground in a scene he shares with the two women, and in a solo scene as he conveys his feelings from England.
Ross Costigan’s Ray delivers plenty of comic relief as promised and is a wonderful foil for the harsh Mag. He especially comes into his own in his longer final scenes, where it is clear the character has good intentions but doesn’t quite know what to make of these two unpredictable women.
It has been said before, but it is worth repeating how fortunate Kilkenny is to have this calibre of theatre locally. This is a dark play and it requires a good deal of skill to convey this depth while also keeping the audience laughing throughout the performance, and staying true to the characters from start to finish.
