THE BEAUTY QUEEN OF LEENANE

About the show

Beauty Queen is set in a cottage in the west of Ireland, in the village of Leenane, in the mountainous heartland of Connemara. Mag Folan is described as being "a stoutish woman in her early seventies . . . sitting in a rocking chair, staring into space". Her daughter, Maureen, is "a plain, slim woman of about forty" and the mother and daughter form the principal relationship and dark drama of the play. Their relationship simmers with an increasing tension and threat, inching towards the release of an inner passion that aims to break and undo the generations of inherited and prescribed status and dominance within the household. Pato Dooley might prove to be, at last, Maureen’s first love (at the age of 40) and allow her to break away from both her mother’s controlling grasp and from the grim future that awaits her, destined to care for her aging and ailing mother, or worse, inheriting her mother’s seat in the rocking-chair of the cottage kitchen, the motion of which served as a metronome ticking away both their lives. Wearily, Maureen, wonders aloud: Do I not wish now? Do I not wish? Sometimes I dream . . . of anything . . . of anything. Other than this. After an initial Irish tour, Beauty Queen opened at the Atlantic Theatre in New York on February 11th 1998. The success of the play at the Atlantic Theatre, which was run by Neil Pepe (where the production run sold out 24 hours after opening), was important for Beauty Queen’s transfer to the Walter Kerr Theatre on Broadway, where it opened on April 14th 1998, securing over $1.2m in advance ticket sales and being nominated for six Tony Awards, all unprecedented for an Irish play.