Marie Mullen as Mag Folan and Aisling O'Sullivan as Maureen Folan

Photo Credit:Richard Termine

 

 

 

                                      by Deirdre Donovan

 

A bit of Grand Guignol to start off the New Year? Admirers of Martin McDonagh now have a chance to see a revival of The Beauty Queen of Leenane at The Brooklyn Academy of Music’s (BAM) Harvey Theater.  Directed by Garry Hynes (Hynes directed the original Broadway production that won her a Tony Award) and starring Marie Mullen as Mag (Mullen played Maureen in the same Broadway production and also won a Tony Award), this comic thriller can still make you gasp in horror.

 

After viewing the original stage version on film at Lincoln Center’s Theatre for Film and Tape Archive it is easy to understand why Hynes and three cast members walked away with Tony statuettes. Beauty Queen packs a real one-two punch.  McDonagh’s artistry is a marriage of Harold Pinter and John Synge’s theatrical craft.  And there’s not a false note in McDonagh’s work from the top of the play to its closing music.

 

Before getting to the particulars of this iteration, an overview of the plotline is in order: We meet a stout 70 year-old woman Mag Folan and her plain and virginal 40 year-old daughter Maureen Folan.  They live uneasily together in a small cottage in the small town of Leenane in western Ireland (That old saw “familiarity breeds contempt” is a hand-in-glove fit for this pair).  When Maureen meets the good-looking Pato Dooley at a dance one evening and sparks fly, the spiteful Mag soon derails their romance by intercepting Pato’s letter to Maureen, which suggests she put her ma in a nursing home.  Maureen later learns of her mother’s snooping and trashing the missive--and vengefully retaliates.  The entire play, in fact, is a continual battleground for the two, where each torture each other and create a hell-on-earth in the dingy cottage.

 

Does the current mounting at BAM have the impact of the original Broadway production?  Not quite.  Although Hynes stages Beauty Queen with a careful eye to McDonagh’s text and aesthetic, she doesn’t bring anything new to it.  Yes, the performing space at BAM is more expansive than at the Broadway venue.  But bigger doesn’t translate to better here.  In fact, Beauty Queen loses some of its claustrophobic feel (an essential quality to the drama) on BAM’s spacious stage.

 

That said, no complaints with the acting ensemble.  Marie Mullen inhabits Mag with a sly caginess that suits her curmudgeonly character.  Aisling O’Sullivan, as Maureen, is spot-on as the resentful lonely daughter who yearns for a life of her own.

 

Marty Rea as Pato Dooley and Aisling O'Sullivan as Maureen Folan

 

Marty Rea, as Pato Dooley, is convincing as the handsome male neighbor who takes an interest in Maureen.  And Aaron Monaghan, as his 20 year-old brother Ray Dooley, captures the tetchy quality of his character.

 

If the actors pass muster, so do the creatives.  Francis O’Connor’s set truly conjures up Leenane, that outpost town in Connemara where watching a calf go by serves as the quotidian entertainment for the locals.    James F. Ingalls’ lighting is appropriately muted by shadows.  And Doreen McKenna’s costumes are the epitome of frumpy.

 

Twenty years have passed since Beauty Queen debuted on Broadway and stunned everybody with its grotesque goings on.  True, the novelty of McDonagh’s play has long worn off and its grim jokes are now all too familiar to serious theatergoers.  Still, it remains a powerful cautionary tale, drawing attention to the poison that can take root in a family.

 

Off Broadway

At the Brooklyn Academy of Music (at the Harvey Theater), 651 Fulton Street, Brooklyn.

For ticket information, call BAM Ticket Services at 718.636.4100, or visit BAM.org.

Through February 5.

Running Time:  2 hours with an intermission.