Berkshire on Stage

On April 9 th of this year a press release was sent out by the Dorset Theatre Festival announcing that Kristine Nielsen, a two-time Tony nominee (for VANYA AND SONIA AND MASHA AND SPIKE and for GARY: A SEQUEL TO TITUS ANDRONICUS) would be joining the company this summer to play a leading role in THE BEAUTY QUEEN OF LEENANE by Martin McDonagh. Nielsen, well-known for her comedic performances, returns for a second time to work with the Festival’s resident playwright, Theresa Rebeck, having starred in Rebeck’s THE WAY OF THE WORLD (an adaptation of Congreve’s Restoration comedy), in 2016. Rebeck’s ingenious casting of Kristine Nielsen in THE BEAUTY QUEEN OF LEENANE reveals a fresh approach to this brilliant play.

In 1996 when Martin McDonagh was 26, he sent his unsolicited manuscript to Galway’s first professional theatre company, Druid, run by Garry Hynes, who directed its premiere, and Marie Mullen, who played the title character. Irish by birth and living in London, McDonagh claims to have written it in about a week. Having produced several tours of the play, in 1997 the Druid Theatre Company included it their Leenane Trilogy tour along with McDonagh’s A SKULL IN CONNEMARA and THE LONESOME WEST. In the U.S the play was produced by the Atlantic Theater Company in 1998, and transferred to Broadway a few months later, garnering four Tony Awards.

Like most of Mcdonagh’s work, both for the theatre and in film (as screenwriter and director), THE BEAUTY QUEEN OF LEENANE is a dark comedy with elements of tragedy, irony, and shocking violence. It is the story of the relationship between a seventy-year-old mother, Mag (Kristine Nielsen) and her forty-year-old daughter Maureen (Maxine Linehan), who live together in a modest home on a hill, in the rural town of Connemara (Linehan’s home town), County Galway, Ireland. Mag, who spends her days indoors in a rocking chair, sleeping, eating and watching TV, insists that her daughter take care of her, while Maureen is desperate to find a man to marry and free her from this prison. Mag’s two older daughters have escaped her clutches, but she will do anything to stop Maureen from leaving her. The terrible resentment, bordering on hatred between mother and daughter, both trapped in an ongoing power struggle, is a recipe for disaster.

Doesn’t sound funny, does it? But there are different kinds of humor. In this play, the laughs often derive from cruelty: early in the first scene, Linehan’s Maureen, sick of Mag’s comments about how she wants her porridge and Complan (a beverage) prepared, reports to her mother that a man killed an old woman in Dublin. After Mag says she wouldn’t want a man like that around, Maureen adds conversationally that she wouldn’t mind it “If he clobbered you with a long axe. . . and took your oul’ head off and spat in your neck.” We laugh because it is so outrageous. Is Maureen crazy? That could very well be, or is this the only way she can channel her overwhelming anger?

But once we see how manipulative her mother is we wonder which of these women is worse. Yet Nielsen, bringing her prowess as a comedienne to this role, shows us another kind of laughter: the joy of seeing how Mag operates. We can’t help but laugh at her attempt to control everyone around her, though we know how demanding and destructive she can be. With her twinkling blue eyes, dimples, and the innocent, childlike voice she uses when she wants something, she usually gets it, especially from neighbors like the Dooley brothers: Pato (David Mason), the man Maureen loves—he works unhappily in London (as did Maureen in the past), but returns home from time to time–and his younger brother Ray (Eimhin Fitzgerald Doherty). Although Mag seems like an invalid, as soon as Maureen goes out for anything, her mother fairly bounces out of her chair to commit some act of mischief in an attempt to keep her daughter from finding out about any form of socialization going on in the area, giggling to herself in the process. And then there are her hands, about which we learn more in the course of the play, that keep bobbing up and down on her blanket as she waits to see what her mischief has wrought.

Suddenly, when a tense confrontation occurs, Mag’s blue eyes turn steely and mother and daughter face off, each trying to get the upper hand, each stopping at nothing in order to win the battle they’ve been locked in for twenty years. Linehan and Nielsen are well matched, perhaps more alike than either would acknowledge. But because Nielsen has opened the door a crack to let us in on Mag’s coping mechanisms, we can begin to understand that neither she nor her daughter is a monster but are doing what they feel they have to in order to survive.

A word about the Dooley brothers: Mason’s Pato is a shy man who cares for Maureen but doesn’t have the courage to admit it until he spends an evening with her. Returning to London the next day, he speaks the contents of a letter he is going to send her as he faces the audience, in his halting, awkward way, hands rubbing together for the courage to get through it. Mason’s delivery of that letter is one of the
high points of the production. Doherty’s twenty-year-old Ray visits the women’s home twice: once when he drops in on Mag and the other, towards the end of the play, when he visits Maureen. Constantly on the move, the only time Doherty stays still is when he watches TV with Mag. It is a pleasure to see how he changes his tone from the first visit to the next, when he knows a secret that gives him an advantage.

The realistic set, a hallmark of the Dorset Theatre Festival, is an Irish country kitchen. Designed by Christopher & Justin Swader, every inch is painstakingly detailed. If the action were not so compelling, it would have been fascinating to explore it.

A beautifully constructed play, filled with foreshadowing, foreboding, and humor, THE BEAUTY QUEEN OF LEENANE is a gem. Rebeck’s direction reveals every nuance, including her ending. And the performers, another hallmark of the work at Dorset, are at the top of their game.

THE BEAUTY QUEEN OF LEENANE runs from June 21—July 6, 2024 at the Dorset Theatre Festival. Tickets may be purchased by calling 802-867-2223 or online at dtf@dorsettheatrefestival.org.

Dorset Theatre Festival presents THE BEAUTY QUEEN OF LEENANE by Martin McDonagh. The theatre is located at 104 Cheney Road, Dorset, Vermont. Directed by Theresa Rebeck. Cast: Kristine Nielsen (Mag); Maxine Linehan (Maureen); Eimhin Fitzgerald Doherty (Ray); David Mason (Pato). Scenic Designers: Christopher & Justin Swader; Costume Designer: Fabian Fidel Aguilar; Lighting Designer: Mary Ellen Stebbins; Sound Designer: Fitz Patton; Fight Director: Rod Kinter; Wig Designer Rachel Padua-Shufelt; Production Stage Manager: Benjamin E. C. Pfister.

The production runs two hours twenty minutes with a 15 minute intermission.