The Beauty Queen of Leenane – planting seeds of terror and leaving them to fester (Prime Cut with Lyric Theatre until 1 July)

Before a word is uttered, the Lyric stage is set with a vision of a home that is trapped by the branches and roots of a tree that surround it and break through the ruined fabric into the living space.

Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman is the most upsetting piece of theatre I’ve been privileged to see. His debut play, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, launches that same feeling of doom and terror within my gut when I hear one of the competing explanations for how old Mag Folan came to have a burnt hand.

Playwrights tend to leave a signature on their work. David Ireland usually spills blood on the carpet with a grotesque death to close his plays. McDonagh’s dramatic kink is to plant seeds of terror, leaving them to fester for a while, and when the plot circles back to revisit your worst nightmare, it turns out to be even more chilling than you were dreading. The vibe is present on-screen in The Banshees of Inisherin, but it’s nowhere near as brutal as he pulls off on stage. Watch out for the moment in the stalls when you spot that everyone around you is similarly squirming in their seats; a level of control over audiences the playwright has never met is impressive.

Maureen lifts and lays her mother, the only daughter of the family who doesn’t have a good excuse to leave home. She can but dream. The pair could win medals for bickering, tearing strips of each other, yet capable of switching it off in an instant to discuss the merits and demerits of a type of biscuit. Though you’re left wondering whether those moments of niceness are also part of their twisted game. McDonagh never lets a detail become too tied down if he can leave it slippery.

Ger Ryan and Nicky Harley bludgeon each other like mother and daughter gladiators wielding verbal and physical weapons. Ryan bullies from a sedentary position, while Harley demonstrates more mobile forms of coercive control. She’s brilliant as a manipulator, and shifts so smoothly between the light and shade in Maureen’s complicated personality. The sense of darkness still has space for moments of comedy … which of course makes the next lurch into the evil recesses of the plot even more brilliantly tortured.

The Folan family aren’t the only ones touched by the venom that seems to run through the water in Leenane. Ray Dooley (Marty Breen) plays down his violent tendencies, but still fits right into the pugilistic ambiance of the cottage’s kitchen.

And into this noxious environment steps Ray’s older brother. Pato (Caolán Byrne) works away on building sites in England: perhaps that’s how he has been inoculated against the toxicity that pervades Leenane. His intentions are quite transparent and straightforward in comparison with the potential misdeeds of everyone around him. His frisky hands are welcomed by Maureen. But love’s arrow cannot be allowed to fly straight and true, particularly not if McDonagh’s pen is steering its progress. Byrne’s timing and delivery come to the fore in the monologue that restarts the action after the interval. His great pacing opens up Pato’s meandering letter writing to hoots of laughter.

Director Emma Jordan takes McDonagh’s recipe and boils the ingredients up into a bubbling pot of evil Galway stew. The drama on stage is far more shocking than anything on offer from the Australian soap operas that Mag regularly pretends not to watch. Audiences are jolted into asking whether each of us is only one hot tempered argument away from becoming a Maureen, or a Mag, or a Ray? The mirroring in the final scene isn’t subtle, nor does it need to be. Ciaran Bagnall’s set has been speaking volumes all along about just how tightly the people of Leenane are trapped by themselves, each other, and their insular environment ... and while Jordan has been knocking over the dark dominoes, she’s been quietly setting them back up to fall once more.

The Beauty Queen of Leenane is a co-production by the Lyric Theatre and Prime Cut. Performances continue until Saturday 1 July.

Photo credit: Ciaran Bagnall

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