Theatre review: The Beauty Queen of Leenane
The plays in Martin McDonagh’s Leenane Trilogy — first produced by Druid Theatre Company 20 years ago — are often characterised as cartoonish escalations of stage Oirishry. While they are this (and more), there is also a caustic dose of reality operating in each of them, and particularly in The Beauty Queen of Leenane.
While the play’s demented and hilariously kitschy melodrama brings the willing audience along with it, Beauty Queen is not empty of heart or substance. It revels in visceral shocks and baroque comedy, yes, and one or two stereotypes pass by without scrutiny, but the play has a torment in it, too, that flares up in disarming moments, ambushing the spectator.
