 Sandra Stockley and Maggie Blinco Photo - Fiona King I’m not sure whether it’s true or not, but there’s a great story about Irish playwright Martin McDonagh when he was in Sydney a couple of years back. At the conclusion of the premiere of one of his plays at a certain major theatre company, he made his way down to the bar and in the best tradition of Irish subtlety loudly growled that the production he had just witnessed was “shite!” The creative team, only used to the polite criticism of the local print journalists, were – to say the least - slightly taken aback. And on opening night too!
McDonagh certainly has a way with words which are nothing short of being visceral and barefaced – and in Wildfire Theatre Company’s wonderful production of The Beauty Queen of Leenane, they are also harrowing.
Forty year old Maureen (Sandra Stockley) and her mother Mag (Maggie Blinco) live in less than blissful isolation on a chicken farm in the west of Ireland. It’s a bleak, bleak setting made all the more so by the extraordinary level of antagonism between mother and daughter.
Director Maeliosa Stafford explains in his notes that The Beauty Queen of Leenane’s setting in the west of Ireland is ‘a place to love for its sheer rugged beauty, but stuck in this place like mud on a boot were a people struggling to scratch out an existence; hungry, lonely, forgotten and bitter’.
Mag nags incessantly – for tea, porridge, soup – as she sits on her rocking chair, meddling in Maureen’s affairs. Maureen, clearly resentful of her less than ideal world looking after chickens and her ageing mother, storms in and out of the small cottage set with the moodiness of a teenager but clearly suffering from the dominance of her mother.
Their isolation is temporarily disturbed when the young neighbour Ray (Michael Gupta) announces a party to celebrate the send off of some long lost cousins who now live in America. Ray gives the message to Mag, while Maureen is out and promises to let her know about the invitation. Not long after Ray leaves, Mag makes her way to the coal fire and burns it.
Maureen, however, manages to find out about the party and the secretive and suspicious boundaries between mother and daughter create a tension that becomes the central dominance of the play. This is highlighted when Pato (Patrick Connolly), the elder brother of Ray comes back into town briefly and a spark of love interest flickers between himself and Maureen.
Maeliosa Stafford directs a tight and gripping production with performances that are outstanding, most particularly Maggie Blinco as the grating and almost offensive old Mag.
This is one of those productions that is utterly pure in its delivery of a five-star script – the type that just isn’t seen enough of in this city. Get a bloody good script like this one and throw in some simple and clear staging with some solid actors and you are almost guaranteed to have your socks knocked off. This first venture by Wildfire Theatre Company is an exciting start of things to come. http://artsjournalist.blogspot.com/2008/03/review-beauty-queen-of-leenane.html | 
