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Ugly Ireland >> Emerald Isle stripped of its beauty in Leenane
by AMY BARRATT
Beauty Queen is one of the biggest success stories in theatre in the past decade. The play--and McDonagh, who was all of 23 when he wrote it--picked up all sorts of awards in Ireland and England before moving to New York and picking up four Tony awards in 1998.
The Toronto premiere, with the original Irish director, Garry Hines, and Canadian stars Fiona Reid and Joan Orenstein, is just ending its run at the Canadian Stage Company. When I first heard of that production, I wondered why Centaur didn't just get in on that action. How could they hope to top or match those credentials? Well, the Centaur production does boast Ben Barnes, newly appointed head of Dublin's Abbey Theatre, who also directed last year's wonderful Waiting for Godot, and its cast is also excellent. And although I love Joan Orenstein and miss seeing her at the Centaur--she was a favourite of former AD Maurice Podbrey--I must say I'm actually relieved not to have to watch her in this truly despicable role.
Carolyn Heatherington's Mag gets on our nerves, as she is meant to, from the opening seconds of the play. But those who are expecting Brenda Robins' Maureen to be a typically mousey, downtrodden, dutiful daughter are in for a shock. This character is a monster in her own right. That brings us to my only complaint with the play: there's no one to care about. In a way, McDonagh has given us an old-fashioned fable, in which all of the characters get what they deserve. In this all-too-realistic imaginary world, the worst punishment a character can receive is never being allowed to escape Leenane.
The only decent person in the play is Pato Dooley, a charming neighbour played by Daniel Giverin, who represents the only hope Maureen will ever have of escaping her mother's clutches. The cast is rounded out by Ray Dooley, Pato's angry little slacker brother, played with great charm--if that isn't a contradiction--by recent Concordia graduate, Joe Cobden. The lanky Cobden, whom I first saw in Concordia's Playboy of the Western World, is a talent to watch. Beauty Queen strikes me as a sick bastard child of Synge's Playboy, since both plays take devastating aim at the edict of respecting your elders.
Because of the way the Emerald Isle has been sentimentalized by those who don't live there, as well as by many of its own artists, a play like this needed to be written. It terrifies me that Beauty Queen is only the first in a "Leenane" trilogy. If the other two plays are half as bleak as this one, I dread ever having to see them. Similarly, while I believe The Beauty Queen of Leenane to be in many ways a brilliant play, I hope I never have to sit through a performance of it again. These people are that horrid.
Absurdly cold
The creepy shell of the Darling Foundry makes a wonderful setting for Samuel Beckett's apocalyptic Endgame, which opened as scheduled despite locking horns with the city over permits for the venue earlier last week. Ingenious lighting by Jean-Charles Martel combined with Catherine Bahuaud's set and costumes create the eerie feeling that the four characters have been living out their private purgatory in the space ever since the fires went out decades ago. As the building is unheated, the audience gets to share their misery to some extent.
On opening night, it was a balmy 10 degrees outside; here's what I wore inside the foundry: T-shirt, cotton sweater, fleece jacket, long leather coat, longjohns, wool pants, wool socks, hiking boots, gloves, cap. With a blanket (provided by the company) folded up on the chair under me to avoid coming into contact with cold plastic, I was fairly comfortable. Director Guy Sprung keeps the action moving along and gets you out of there in 90 minutes. :
The Beauty Queen of Leenane, to Dec. 5 at Centaur Theatre; $20-35. Reservations: 288-3161. Endgame/Fin de Partie (alternating English and French versions) to Nov. 14 , at the Darling Foundry, 735 Ottawa (entrance on Prince), 8pm, $12-20; 987-1774 |
If you cherish a sentimental image of Ireland as a land of rolling green hills and poor but pious, good-humoured folk, do not, repeat DO NOT go see The Beauty Queen of Leenane. The green hills are still there, but they're hidden behind grotty kitchen walls in this nasty tale of a 40-year-old daughter and her aging, infirm mother. Currently playing at the Centaur, playwright Martin McDonagh's account of mutual torture--physical and psychological--takes a terrorist bomb to our top o' the mornin' stereotype of the Irish.