The Luck of the Irish

The Luck of the Irish
“Beauty Queen of Leenane” at Open Stage

by Brian Phillips

As if a torrent of Guinness commercials weren’t enough.

That’s right. It’s that time — the time of year when we celebrate all things Irish: Guinness, Leprechauns, corn beef and cabbage, and great literature. Well, perhaps not everyone sits down on that high holy day known as St Patty’s Day to an evening of “Gulliver’s Travels” or “Ulysses,” but if you don’t at least pay a small homage to the greats — Joyce, Beckett, and the like — you should be shot in your farking arse.

All kidding aside, the truth of the matter is that some great writing has come from across the sea via our Celtic brethren. It’s hard to imagine a survey of World Literature without a volume or two of Oscar Wilde or a few stories from Jonathan Swift. The ages are filled with a multitude of fine example of Irish Literature. The 20th Century has proven no exception to this tradition. The Nobel Prize winning Seamus Heaney continues to amaze and delight both poets and verse enthusiasts the world over. William Trevor, along with Flannery O’Connor and Raymond Carver, has helped define the modern short story. And then there is Martin McDonagh. While he’s not yet in the boat with these greats, McDonagh, a 28-year-old playwright with only a few published plays under his belt, has taken the London Theatre world by storm. And his reputation as the freshest voice in contemporary drama is well deserved; it has brought him across the ocean to great reviews in New York and all across the country.

This freshness came to Harrisburg on February 2. McDonagh’s “The Beauty Queen of Leenane” premiered with the usual fanfare of all things Open Stage. The show, a tale of a mother and daughter’s cruel relationship with each other and with life, is ripe with great themes: love, intimacy, man’s inhumanity to man, the odd bond that we call family, and, of course, happiness in all of its fleeting glory. Not that there is an overabundance of happiness in this dark and most times disturbing tale, but it is there.

In fact, that search for happiness is the core at the center of the whole disturbing play. The mother, who finds a somewhat sick pleasure in controlling her daughter; the daughter who simply wants a normal life without the constraints of familial obligation; the 40-ish Pato Dooley who wants nothing more than to find love and companionship; and Dooley’s younger relation Ray, who finds contentment in Australian television and the thought of bashing a “cop-per” over the head with a fire poker. While on the surface most of this may sound quite normal, when you factor in a mother is a bit loony and a daughter whose dementia we only witness in the second half of the play, you get a picture of a dark and sobering reality which allows no prizes. Even Pato, whose motives and actions are as close to sane as the play has to offer, is infected by the poison surrounding Mag and Maureen Folan.

The whole play teeters constantly between order and chaos. This is an interesting balance — if you can call it that — because the play turns its notions and ideas of right and wrong upside down and backwards more often than a campaigning politician works. And, in the end, the audience is left with a quirky, off-the-wall portrait of modern life, not only in Ireland, but in some ways, of America as well.
The team at Open Stage did a nice job putting this show together, from top to bottom. The set was simply designed: each corner and every prop having its perfect place and every effect serving its desired purpose, including a window with real rain that gave a nice visual and audio texture to the play.

But the set would have been nothing without the team of players that acted this challenging work. This play, despite all of its overpowering reality, was also filled with great humor — dark humor — and intimacy. The relationship of Mag Folan and her daughter Maureen is so important to this play that without the right chemistry between well-directed actors this play would be nothing more than the a mediocre episode of “The Jerry Springer Show.” Anne Alsedek and Amy Ashby made this play work. Their timing was superb. Their accents right on and, working together, they had that familiarity that, in this case, not only bred contempt, but also built trust with the audience.

This show is not one too be missed. Of course for all the mentioned reasons, but also because it is a story about Ireland. Even if you have no Irish blood in your veins, the tale is so very Irish in its every detail that you feel like you have traveled abroad. It opens a door to another world and to another culture. And isn’t that why we enjoy art? We can enjoy the world that we don’t know and in it, see those things that we do know.

So when you are ready to get your evening’s dose of great Irish tradition, grab your pint glass and call the Open Stage box office. It is an evening that you will not necessarily enjoy, but it will enlighten you both in the ways of modern drama, with all of its richness, and the ways of the world. Besides, an evening at the theatre is a lot less painful than six pints of Guinness.

Or in this case, maybe not.

“The Beauty Queen of Leenane” by Martin McDonagh runs now through March 4. For show times and tickets call Open Stage at 232-OPEN.