The Beauty Queen of Leenane at Draíocht

Coolmine Drama Circle has the proud record of staging top class amateur drama in Dublin 15 continuously for the past 40 years. As part of their 40th anniversary celebrations, the group are staging a new production of one of their greatest previous successes, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, which on its earlier visit to Draíocht played to sell-out houses and rave revues.

Martin McDonagh’s award winning (6 Tony Award nominations for its 1998 Broadway production) tragi-comedy is set in an isolated cottage above the small Connemara village of Leenane during the equally recessionary times of the 1980s. Mag Folan and her daughter Maureen live there, alone. Maureen’s two sisters married some 20 years ago leaving her alone to look after her ageing mother over all those years. Mag is demanding and manipulative. Maureen is bitter and resentful. Relations between the two are tense and difficult. When Mag interferes in Maureen’s belated first, and very possibly last chance of romance, a chain of events is triggered which leads, inexorably, to a terrible and tragic outcome.

Authors

• Martin McDonagh