Tag Archives: Robert Piwko

The Beauty Queen Of Leenane

★★★★

The Tower Theatre

Beauty Queen Of Leenane

The Beauty Queen Of Leenane

The Tower Theatre

Reviewed – 7th November 2019

★★★★

 

“Waggott’s ability to balance frailty and seeming harmlessness with taloned cruelty is quite spectacular”

 

Martin McDonagh has made quite a name for himself in the past few years as a connoisseur of pitch-black humour and crooked characters. Whilst he’s become a household name for major screenplays such as In Bruges and Oscar-winning Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, his ability to make an entire audience laugh at the most heinous crimes, and then to gasp at their own inhumanity, is showcased most spectacularly in the theatre.

Having climbed to such great heights as casting Jim Broadbent in the starring role of his most recent West End production, A Very Very Very Dark Matter, it’s quite a treat to go back to McDonagh’s first play and see where he began, and indeed where his twisted sense of humour and humanity first came to fruition.

At forty years old, Maureen (Julia Flatley) still lives with her seemingly ailing mother, Mag (Amanda Waggott), in Leenane, a small Irish village. Embittered by the cards she’s been dealt, Maureen spends her days snapping at her mother and telling her of her fantasies of finding her corpse on the kitchen table. Mag seems little concerned by her daughter’s misery and isolation, and appears to want her to stay forever, regardless.

But at a party at the neighbours’, Maureen reconnects with an old crush, the neighbours’ son Pato (Nick Cannon), and she dares to wonder that there might be a way out of her miserable and lonely existence after all. That is if her mother doesn’t have anything to say on the matter.

The set (Philip Ley) is detailed but traditional, allowing the psychological gymnastics of the script, rather than an overly complex design, to do the talking. The entire story takes place in Maureen and Mag’s kitchen-living room, the room in which they spend the majority of their days, and you can feel the sense of crushing claustrophobia by which Maureen is tormented, and which Mag depends upon, like a crusty old corset.

Waggott’s ability to balance frailty and seeming harmlessness with taloned cruelty is quite spectacular, and Flatley is an equally armed adversary. There’s a natural desire to find the villain in this story, but both are so twisted and yet so tormented, it’s impossible to pick a side.

In stark contrast, Cannon’s open-faced, sweet nature seems completely foreign in this household. Bringing a little levity to the plot, he’s a pleasant reminder that this room isn’t the whole world, and that not everyone is full of rancor and vitriol.

Simon Brooke, playing Pato’s petulant younger brother, is plenty energetic, but he could do with toning it down a tiny bit, just so that when he’s really losing his patience, or being especially sulky, we can tell.

For the first half, I don’t know that I saw much of what I have come to recognise as McDonagh hallmarks, but as the story unravels, so too does the web of miseries and mishaps, and, most disquietingly, somehow we’re laughing at it all. The Beauty Queen of Leenane, as directed by Colette Dockery, is perhaps more subtle than his most recent works, but it is just as disturbingly sadistic, and perniciously potent.

 

Reviewed by Miriam Sallon

Photography by Robert Piwko

 


The Beauty Queen Of Leenane

The Tower Theatre until 16th November

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:
To Kill a Mockingbird | ★★★½ | October 2018
Table | ★★★★ | November 2018
The Seagull | ★★★ | November 2018
Talk Radio | ★★★½ | March 2019
Happy Days | ★★★★★ | April 2019
Little Light | ★★★ | June 2019

 

Click here to see our most recent reviews

 

Irish Coffee

★★

Calder Bookshop & Theatre

Irish Coffee

Irish Coffee

 Calder Bookshop and Theatre

Reviewed – 13th October 2019

★★

 

“Irish Coffee has exciting potential, but this production seems intent on sabotaging itself, instead delivering a thriller that simply doesn’t thrill”

 

Since 2019 marks 100 years since the birth of beloved Argentinian political figure Eva Perón, it feels as apt a time as any to present work on her legacy. It’s hugely welcomed that a new play aims to shine a different sort of light on Perón than Lloyd Webber’s over-produced megamusical Evita, but unfortunately the execution of Irish Coffee leaves only a bitter taste.

In the wake of Perón’s death and the installation of a military government in place of her husband’s presidency, rumours are flying as to the whereabouts of her body, and journalists Rodolfo (Fergus Foster) and Tomás (Giorgio Galassi) are eager to find answers. In doing so, they become entangled with Colonel Moori-Koenig (Gary Heron) and his (unnamed) wife (Sally Ripley), and thus – in theory – tense political thrills ensue. The play is adapted from the real-life Rodolfo’s short story about his encounter with the Colonel, a meeting which doesn’t take place until about halfway through the script in Irish Coffee, originally written by Eva Halac and translated from Spanish by Daniel Kelly and Luis Gayol (who also takes on directorial duties). It’s no surprise, then, that that meeting makes for the best scene of the play as it had excellent source material to adapt from, although it also unfortunately highlights the lacklustre and meandering nature of the rest of the show.

Most of the scenes are two-handers between either the journalists or the Colonel and his wife, and since the people in those pairs are striving to achieve the same things, there is very little conflict or tension in those interactions, and what is there is forced and jumbled in with heaps of clunky exposition. It was somewhat astounding that Gayol worked as a translator for the text given his lack of reverence for it as a director, as the actors appeared to be following instructions to do as much unnecessary busywork in the overstuffed set as possible. In one instance, the blocking placed two actors at the very front of the intimately-sized stage, completely obscuring what was supposed to be one of the few crucial visual moments happening behind them. It felt as though the company were expecting to be performing on the National Theatre’s Olivier Stage, only to at the last second be moved to the Calder Bookshop and Theatre, which is much cosier (albeit still a delightful venue).

The performances too felt roundly under-rehearsed, as though Gayol had requested ‘shout this line’ or ‘cry here’ and the actors were doing as they were told without having found an emotional justification to do so. Despite this, Galassi and Heron both provide stellar stage presences, and as mentioned, the scenes in which the opposing sides interact begin to provide a crackle of energy -however, that happens far too late in the play and fizzles out far too soon. Irish Coffee has exciting potential, but this production seems intent on sabotaging itself, instead delivering a thriller that simply doesn’t thrill.

 

Reviewed by Ethan Doyle

Photography by Robert Piwko

 


Irish Coffee

 Calder Bookshop and Theatre until 3rd November

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:
Inga | ★★★★ | November 2018

 

Click here to see our most recent reviews