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Creepy, funny, and blessed with actors capable of producing completely listenable Irish accents, Beauty Queen is a fine way to pass an evening, so long as that evening doesn’t involve a date. Then again, if your date is into chamber pots and head injuries, somebody’s getting lucky. Want more information? Too bad. Specifics mean spoilers, and nobody should be spared the shock of realizing just how crazy McDonagh’s characters are if they don't already know.
The story takes place in the tiny village of Leenane, Ireland, which is the kind of place where everyone knows your name, and that's not necessarily a good thing. The plot seems simple enough: aging invalid Mag Folan (a highly flawed character played flawlessly by Jennifer Underwood) hounds and is hounded by her caretaker daughter, Maureen (overacted, sadly, by Lorella Loftus, who is also Renaissance Austin's artistic director). But this is no redeeming tale of mother and daughter rekindling a broken relationship. There are wounds, both emotional and physical, that will never heal.
When Maureen finds love with handsome Pato Dooley, well played with an awe-shucks aire by Marc Balester, everything goes pear-shaped. If the first act seems slow, things pick up in the second with some truly funny scenes between the younger Dooley brother Ray, whose perennial angst is captured by Mason Stewart, and grey-haired Mag, who go head to head in a competition for ultimate stubbornness.
The set is bare, presumably to give the strong characters room to drink their Complan, and much of it is borrowed from a Hyde Park Theatre production of The Lonesome West, another McDonagh work. Audience members aren't likely to notice this, anyway, because Underwood's performance is so very strong that it's difficult to look away when she's on stage. In fact, for a story about a mother and a daughter, some of the play's best scenes are between Mag and the Dooley brothers, who struggle, alternately, to please and irritate her. Thankfully, in an ending montage that will leave the audience trying to figure out just who is the most batshit crazy of them all, Lorella Loftus finally finds her stride as Maureen, just as another character loses their head—or most of it, anyway.
The Beauty Queen of Leenane is a perfectly awkward view into one tiny slice of modern Irish life. So real that it's cringe-inducing in all the right places (sex in the kitchen, anyone?) and so unbelievable that it's got to be a little bit true, the play's dark sensibilities will keep audiences committed.
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