BWW Reviews: Evil Lurks in THE BEAUTY QUEEN OF LEENANE at ShakesCo in the Berkshires

Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Massachusetts has taken THE BEAUTY QUEEN OF LEENANE and given it a splrited interpretation. The acting and overall production employes some of its finest actors, and the production itself is well designed. The story is fascinating too, proving that evil comes wrapped in mediocrity,and that even the simple folk are capable of meting out terrible punishments. To watch THE BEAUTY QUEEN OF LEENANE is to be able to peek ehind the closed doors of simple Irish cottages where terrible truths lurk, ones that usually never see the light of day. It is both immensely enjoyable and shocking, and fans of the horror genre of films - those that play in the art houses anyway - will find much about Beauty Queen to appreciate.

The two dueling borderline personalities that inhabit the cramped little cottage are Meg (Tina Packer) the mother, and her unmarried daughter Maureen (Elizabeth Aspenlieder). Sparks fly, tempers flare and violence happens in Martin McDonough's script, which starts off leisurely enough, and then takes us places we never expect to go.

There's a hint of Grimm's Fairy Tales in this story. Not the rewritten pretty ones we often feed our children, but the surrealistic and horrifying originals. In this tale, Meg is always manipulating Maureen, but the daughter's bullshit detector is finely tuned and when set off, she becomes the Grand Inquisitor, torture included.

How these characters and their tales sprang from the mind of Martin McDonough has been the subject of speculation for 15 years now, ever since THE BEAUTY QUEEN OF LEENANE won four Tony's out of six nominations in 1998.

Anglo-Irish playwright Martin McDonagh is a prolific writer, and could provide Shakesepeare & Company with a theatrical franchise that would easily give them new plays to perform well into the next decade. He writes fast and considers his Leenane plays THE BEAUTY QUEEN OF LEENANE, (1996), A Skull in Connemara (1997) and The Lonesome West (1997) a trilogy, and indeed they are sometimes performed together since they are essentially variations on the same themes. He wrote Beauty Queen in a week and a half, and the others in a month or two. His second Irish trilogy continues the formula with The Cripple of Inishmaan (1997), The Lieutenant of Inishmore (2001) and The Banshees of Inisheer (unpubished.)

While McDonough grew up in London of Irish parents, he chose to set his early plays in the west of Ireland, and to have his characters speak in the Irish idiom. Following his Irish period, he wrote The Pillowman (2003) set in a fictitious totalitarian state and A Behanding in Spokane (2010). Over the years he has played with his own version of outright fairy tales as well, randomly pairing characters and seeing what he could come up with, The Tale of the Wolf and the Woodcutter for example.

Regardless of the particular play, McDonagh's works are a challenge for both directors and actors since his characters - much like real people - are operating on two, sometimes three levels at the same time.

What Meg and Maureen say to each other is plenty sharp and pointed, but what lurks behind the often bilious bellowing is even worse. Watching Tina Packer's Meg is to see another whole side of her acting range. Even as she stares blankly at a television playing downstage, you become aware that she is not missing a word or action that Maureen is engaged in. Packer's Meg is not too swift, but that does not stop her from doing whatever she can to undermine Elizabeth Aspenlieder's Maureen who is trapped in the role of catering to her mothers multiple needy demands. Her other daughters escaped via marriage and stay far from the troubles in Leenane.

Into the isolated cottagte, two brothers visit, Ray Dooley the younger (Edmund Donovan) and Pato Dooley the elder (David Sedgwick). Ray's existence is ignored by Meg who keeps forgetting his name, and he is used by his older brother as a messenger for his notes to Maureen. "I am here under duress," says Ray at one point, and while given specific instructions to deliver a message or letter to Maureen on Pato's behalf, he ends up leaving them in the hands of Meg who promptly destroys them, lest Maureen become involved in a relationship that might cause her to leave home.

Before the first act is done, Maureen has taken Pato to her bed, flaunted the relationship in front of her despised mother, and Meg retaliates. Aspenlieder's multi-layered interpretation of Maureen is the equal of Packer's and watching the tug of war between the two escalate is the sort of dynamic drama one goes to the theatre to enjoy. Watch the glorious Tina Packer transform herself into a lumpen sack of potatoes, that is acting that takes inordinate courage. Never before have I seen Packer buried so deeply inside her character, especially one so hideous.

The mother-daughter relationship brings to mind the blind and paralized Hamm in Beckett's Endgame with Meg giving orders amd Maureen as a sort of Clov, the servant who never sits.

Meg, sits in her rocker, demanding porridge and shortbread fingers, even as she is pretending to be totally "out of it". Like many parents, she watches her daughter with her ears and has a selective memory. Aspenlieder appears at first to be the innocent, fixing and serving her mother's endless needs, but soon we notice her raise an eyebrow just before meting out her mean-spirited minor punishments to Meg for being too demanding, thoughtless or petulant. But when the ultimate transgression is discovered - interfering with develping love - the reaction crosses the line as far more sinister penalties are dealt out.

Matthew Penn has efficiently staged the wresting match between the two by keeping Aspenlieder on the move while Packer orders her around. This all works briliantly, except for one very important gaffe...

The most shocking scene - which I am not going to reveal - suffers from the terrible sight lines at the Bernstein in which my view of it was obscured by my seat location. The stage, with seating on three sides necessitates some people seeing the back of heads during various portions of the performance and in this case the crucial details of the show's most important scene were blocked. Not until I compared notes with someone after the show did I discover what actualy happened on stage when my view was obscured. Part of the blame must also go to director Penn who had the scene underplayed and the physical clues as to what happened also minimized.

It is difficult enough wrestling with those Irish accents when you can see the actors when they are speaking. 50% of recognizing words is the unconsciuos abilitiy to see the words as well as hear them. So when the actors speak their lines to other parts of the house and all you can see is the back of their heads, comprehension is impaired.. It seems I can deal with those accents when I can see them being spoken, but not when they are directed away from me, losing both volume and clarity. And there is a problem with the seating arrangement with so few really good seats in the Bernstein. Squeezed into the back row was a national reviewer which begs the question of why those who are supposed to write in detail about a performance aren't assured seats where they can see and hear what is happening on stage to best advantage.

Personal quibbles aside, THE BEAUTY QUEEN OF LEENANE is a wonderful choice of play for Shakespeare & Company and one can hope that the rest of the trilogy might follow in successive seasons. Now that we have met the spinster and her plotting mother, we might enjoy meeting some other Irish characters in this trilogy. For example in A Skull in Connemara we would meet a gravedigger who exhumes skeletons in an overcrowded graveyard and encounters the skull of his wife he was accused of killing. And in The Lonesome Wife, two male siblings hurl charges at each other after the suspicious "accidental" shooting of their father.

As a first production of a Malcolm McDonagh play, they have delivered one very impressive production, introduced their audience to a brilliiant writer, delivered solid acting and -hopefully - paved the way for more.

Shakespeare & Company presents THE BEAUTY QUEEN OF LEENANE by Malcolm McDonagh, directed by Matthew Penn, Sets by Patrick Brennan, Costumes by Lena Sands, Lighting by Matthew Miller, Sound Video Design and Lights Director - Alexander Sovronsky, Stage Manager - Nicole Marconi. Cast: Elizabeth Aspenlieder - Maureen Folan; Edmund Donovan - Ray Dooley; Tina Packer - Meg Folan; David Sedgwick - Pato Dooley. Two hours plus one fifteen minute intermission. August 8-September 15, 2013. At the Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre, Lenox, MA. www.shakespeare.org 413-637-3353.

Photo Credit: Enrico Spada

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