The Beauty Queen of Leenane
The Wyandotte Players, who present their shows at Kansas City Kansas Community College, are offering the Irish play, Martin McDonagh’s The Beauty Queen of Leenane from June 16-25.
It is a blend of black comedy, melodrama, horror and my favourite, bleak tragedy. The play is set in Leenane, a small town in Connemara, County Galway, and along with A Skull in Connemara and The Lonesome West formed The Leenane Trilogy.
The original production programme and promotional flyer describes The Beauty Queen of Leenane as:
the darkly comic tale of Maureen Folan, a plain and lonely woman in her early forties, and Mag, her manipulative ageing mother. Mag’s interference in her daughter’s first and possibly final chance of a loving relationship sets in motion a train of events that lead inexorably towards the play’s inevitable dénouement
That reminds me of the time I had a shedload of pints that led inexorably towards an inevitable dénouement one Thursday. The Beauty Queen of Leenane opened in 1996 in Galway and went on to win four Tony Awards in New York.
See also:
• McDonagh Play for Unicorn Theatre
• Bloomsday 2006 in Kansas City
• All Irish Literature news on Irish KC
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