Tag Archives: Maureen Lennon

MARY AND THE HYENAS

★★★

Wilton’s Music Hall

MARY AND THE HYENAS

Wilton’s Music Hall

★★★

“an eye-catching tribute to millions of devalued female lives”

Animal spirits are roused, and a proto-feminist movement born, amid blood and viscera, in Mary and the Hyenas, a raucous musical re-telling of the short but impactful life of Mary Wollenstonecraft, the 18th century philosopher, writer and radical.

She died, aged 38, following complications giving birth to the girl who would grow up to write Frankenstein, and the show gives Mary the 10 days between birth and death to educate her daughter on how to be a woman in a hostile world.

The dilemma is this: give them the freedom to think and risk a life of restraint and frustration; or let them be ignorant and perhaps content with marriage and childcare.

Mother Mary inevitably chooses the former path – and sets about educating not only her own daughters but every daughter everywhere, riling the patriarchy no end and filling girls’ heads with discomforting notions of self-fulfilment and equality.

Rock chick Mary is brought to vivid life in a tour-de-force performance by Laura Elsworthy, tear-stained, pink-haired, sharp-elbowed and forever with a rebel yell on her lips. She presents Mary not as an invulnerable ideologue, but a woman susceptible to the very traps and manipulations she sees with such clarity elsewhere.

She lives and loves outrageously, and to her very great cost.

Elsworthy is supported by a five-strong backing group – Ainy Medina, Beth Crame, Elexi Walker, Kat Johns-Burke, Kate Hampson – who rise to meet the demands of a very physical production. They are forever scaling designer Sara Perks’ mountainous and boxy set, or donning hats, aprons, glasses, accents etc to create a full cast of characters. In between they belt out songs by Tor Maries (Billy Nomates).

It is a pity that the songs fail to ignite despite all the huffing and puffing on the embers. The shouty affirmations seem to be in search of a melody and the cold Human League style electro-pop doesn’t assist, draining the numbers of emotional connection. The lyrics are symptomatic of the production’s greatest failing. The sloganeering, however well meaning, is an easy go-to, filling the gaps when the story-telling flags. It is a call-and-response of diminishing returns.

Beyond the committed cast, the strengths of director Esther Richardson’s over busy but colourful production lie in the depiction of women conditioned to become little more than ornaments and brood mares. Humour is the most effective weapon in writer Marueen Lennon’s arsenal. She pricks the preening pomposity of the male intelligentsia who view Mary as an oddity to be treated warily and at arm’s length. The audience responds warmly to these infrequent sprigs of wry lampooning and crave more of the same.

(“I won’t be able to apply myself with a husband,’ says one would-be anatomist. “I bet they get in the way.”)

Mary and the Hyenas is an eye-catching tribute to millions of devalued female lives – and to one of endless significance.



MARY AND THE HYENAS

Wilton’s Music Hall

Reviewed on 20th March 2025

by Giles Broadbent

Photography by Tom Arran


Previously reviewed at this venue:

THE MAGIC FLUTE | ★★★★ | February 2025
POTTED PANTO | ★★★★★ | December 2024
THE PIRATES OF PENZANCE | ★★★★ | October 2024
THE GIANT KILLERS | ★★★★ | June 2024
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM | ★★★★★ | April 2024
POTTED PANTO | ★★★★★ | December 2023
FEAST | ★★★½ | September 2023
I WISH MY LIFE WERE LIKE A MUSICAL | ★★★★★ | August 2023
EXPRESS G&S | ★★★★ | August 2023
THE MIKADO | ★★★★ | June 2023

 

MARY AND THE HYENAS

MARY AND THE HYENAS

MARY AND THE HYENAS

The Beauty Queen Of Leenane

★★★★

Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch

The Beauty Queen Of Leenane

The Beauty Queen Of Leenane

Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch

Reviewed – 31st October 2019

★★★★

 

“From the banal domesticity of the outset, Mark Babych’s direction creates an atmosphere of eerie foreboding”

 

As the rain pours down on an isolated cottage in the hills of Connemara, the fate of 40-year-old Maureen who lives with her mother, Mag, unravels in a compelling story of bitterness, hope and disillusion. Their hardened relationship of resentful co-dependence is threatened when an old friend, Pato, turns up unexpectedly and offers Maureen a new life. Refusing to be abandoned by her one constancy, Mag has no qualms about trying to prevent her daughter from leaving, but with drastic repercussions.

Martin McDonagh’s first play and part of the ‘Leenane Trilogy’, ‘The Beauty Queen of Leenane’, was his theatrical breakthrough in 1996. Inspired by the life and language he was immersed in during childhood summers in his father’s hometown, it is a masterpiece of plot and role enmeshment. The tragicomedy flows naturally from the Irish idiom and spirit, describing the trials and tribulations of a bleak existence but with a sharp, funny edge. From the banal domesticity of the outset, Mark Babych’s direction creates an atmosphere of eerie foreboding, the stifling timelessness of confinement is contrasted with the breezy dream of escape. This is reinforced in Sara Perks’ creative, detailed set, with the thick, cut-down walls revealing the wide, open sky, and Jess Addinall’s dramatic lighting design.

As the conversations develop, the layers are peeled back to reveal the complex balance of close-knit families, each very different person irrevocably bonded by the past. Maggie McCarthy is an unnervingly sinister Mag, swaying from needy elderly mother to remorseless manipulator. The charming yet sensitive Pato is played by Nicholas Boulton, with a genuinely moving show of affection for Maureen but, as the hidden conflicts of her character gradually surface she becomes ever more challenging; in an impassioned performance by Siobhan O’Kelly, Maureen faces the reality of the life she leads. Laurence Pybus is excellent as Pato’s slow-witted yet coltish brother, Ray, whose restless chatter and behaviour appears both comic and disturbing.

This production, in collaboration with Hull Truck Theatre, re-establishes the roots of McDonagh’s talent for dark comedy and reflects his innate feeling for the film genre which he successfully moved into later. The immaculate set and lighting have a cinematic quality and the direction, particularly at the end, draws on this. It is only at the culminating point that we lose connection due to the distance from the stage and the moment is not as chilling as it could be. In addition, the music and sound by Adam McCready, which generally fit this style, occasionally come across – particularly between scenes – quite oversized for such an intimate atmosphere. With accomplished, subtly powerful acting ‘The Beauty Queen of Leenane’ hooks the audience into the corrosive, emotional entanglement with suspense and engaging wit.

 

Reviewed by Joanna Hetherington

Photography by Ian Hodgson

 


The Beauty Queen Of Leenane

Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch until 16th November

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:
Rope | ★★★★ | February 2018
The Game of Love and Chai | ★★★ | April 2018
Priscilla, Queen of the Desert | ★★★ | May 2018
Abi | ★★★★ | September 2018
Abigail’s Party | ★★★½ | September 2018
Once | ★★★★★ | October 2018
Haunting Julia | ★★ | November 2018
The Hired Man | ★★★ | April 2019
As You Like It | ★★★★ | August 2019

 

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