Amy AsmanA bleakly dark storyline edged with laugh-out-loud humor is met with talented actors in the regional premiere of Martin McDonagh’s play, “The Beauty Queen of Leenane,” which is appearing at Cal Poly’s Alex and Faye Spanos Theatre through Saturday.
Set in the Irish village of Leenane in 1989, the plot focuses on the volatile relationship between 40-year-old Maureen Folan and her 70-year-old mother, Mag. The two engage in cruel cycles of confrontation, each malicious action inciting a greater and crueler revenge.
“The Beauty Queen of Leenane” is performed in Irish dialect, which all of the actors pull off with ease.
Audience members follow the characters’ increasingly vicious retaliations with intensifying discomfort, though the hostile atmosphere is periodically broken up with incredibly funny dialogue that catches the viewer off-guard.
Biochemistry freshman Victoria Doroski commands a powerful onstage presence in the role of Maureen. Doroski is both hard-edged and vulnerable as an obscure character whose actions provoke sympathy, fear, and horror from the audience as the complex layers of her personality are revealed.
Maureen is a woman fed-up with her dreary day-to-day life in the bleak and rural Irish country town of Leenane. She returns home every day, cold and wet, to wait on a mentally-abusive mother whose only joys are complaining, belittling her daughter, and devouring biscuits and cups of Complan, a nutritional drink geared towards an older population.
The play’s physical set compliments Maureen’s small and suffocating world. The two women pace across the cramped interior of a cottage, trapped together in a small space. The living area features Maureen’s rocking chair, positioned directly in front of the television, as well as a small, wooden kitchen table with a few hard chairs. The walls and bookshelves are crowded with dishes and candlesticks. A stove and working sink top off the confining set of an Irish, lower-middle class home circa 1989.
Polluted with the smell of her mother’s urine, which Mag dumps from her bedpan down the kitchen sink every morning, the small home is more of a prison for Maureen. Maureen longs for some form of companionship to break her away from her mother and the dirty cottage they share.
Conversely, Mag is terrified of being left alone by her last daughter. Thankfully for Mag, Maureen is unmarried and is unlikely to find another companion, since almost all of the Irish men have gone to England or America in search of work.
This all changes when handsome and charismatic Pato Dooley returns to Leenane from England.
Portrayed by theatre junior Duncan Calladine, Pato charms both Maureen and the audience with his natural humor and sensitivity towards the complex and emotional situations which arise.
Upon his arrival, Maureen glimpses a chance for love and a possible escape from her suffocating mother. But alas, Mag interferes every chance she can get, deceiving her daughter and burning all evidence in the stove. Maureen also interferes with her own plans for love, at times so consumed with a need for retaliation against her mother she loses sight of an escape.
Theatre senior Shawna Hood plays the foul, nagging and manipulative Mag. Hood shines in the role, provoking both hatred and sympathy from the viewer as the storyline unravels. Hood’s talent, voice, and body language mix to create a senile and calculating old woman whose feelings and deceptions are revealed through her animated facial expressions.
Things are further complicated when Ray, Pato’s younger brother, gets in the mix. Portrayed lightheartedly by Cuesta student Chase Mullins, Ray is a hip 19-year-old who strives to be cool and is obsessed with television. Ray serves as Pato’s messenger to Maureen, and delivers comical, witty lines more often than he delivers his brother’s messages.
“The Beauty Queen of Leenane” will run at 8 p.m. through Saturday with an additional 2 p.m. matinee performance on Saturday. Tickets may be purchased at the Performing Arts Ticket Office for $10 for students and $12 for the general public.