Martin McDonagh is a brilliant 28-year-old Irish playwright who has a great future ahead of him. He was recently represented on Broadway with The Lonesome West, and Northlight Theater in Skokie did an excellent job with his second play, The Cripple of Inishmaan. His most celebrated work, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, is set in the small impoverished town of Leenane, County Galway. Maureen, played by Laurie Metcalf, is a 40-year-old virgin who cares for her aging mother. Mag, played by Aideen O'Kelly, is manipulative and always complaining. At first she strikes the audience as a rather comic, pitiful character, while the daughter seems justifiably exasperated and stern.
The extent of the women's cruelty towards each other only gradually makes itself clear. Driven by a terror of being left alone, Mag barely moves from her rickety old chair in front of the television. Yet she manages to control her lovely daughter's life with a sadistic selfishness. At the same time, Maureen doesn't even pretend to hide her resentment and hatred of the old women, verbally abusing the mother with the same relish with which she occasionally withholds food as punishment.
The meanness really gets under way with the arrival of gentleman caller Pato, played by Rick Snyder, with mom doing anything she can to sabotage her spinster daughter's future. Pato is visiting his old hometown, having long escaped to the job opportunities of London. After becoming reacquainted at a party, Pato spends the night with Maureen, sparking a quick romance that could be the woman's last shot at happiness. Mag. of course, is shocked and angered when Pato ambles into the kitchen the next morning, and the tense scene that follows has Maureen flaunting her night of passion for no other reasons then to torture her mother. Mag responds in kind, making accusations of physical abuse and telling Pato about Maureen's history of mental problems. Lest anyone think these characters are all talk and little harm, McDonagh builds on the brutality through the second act, with Mag intercepting and destroying a letter delivered by Ray, played by Christopher Fitzgerald, and Maureen, upon learning of the deceit, retaliates in a way so brutal as to leave the audience squirming. As with most dysfunctional families, this is not a play with a happy ending. Rick Snyder fleshes out the gentleman caller character with great sympathy and intelligence, while Christopher Fitzgerald is very funny as Pato's restless, cheeky younger brother.
As the mother, Aideen O'Kelly offers a staggering creation, a vile, unkempt lump of a woman whose ruthlessness is barely concealed beneath a doddering demeanor. Metcalf does a superb job as the lonely daughter, who's learned more than a thing or two about ruthlessness from her mother.
