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| Programme cover, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, 1996 |
The Beauty Queen of
Leenane by Martin McDonagh was a point of departure for many reasons. When
it opened to a world premiere production by Galway's Druid Theatre Company, in
a co-production with London's Royal Court Theatre, on the first of February
1996, it also marked the opening of a new theatre building – Galway's Town Hall
Theatre. The play would also be a whirlwind success for Druid and open up one of the
most important and celebrated relationship's in contemporary Irish drama – that
of director Garry Hynes and the plays of Martin McDonagh. it also, of course, exposed audiences both in Ireland and around the world, to a very different 'Irish' play.
Within two years of
the play's opening in Galway, Beauty
Queen would make history and secure four Tony awards, including Best
Director for Garry Hynes, the first female director to win the award.
The play would tour extensively in Ireland, the U.K. and
wider internationally, from Broadway to Sydney, over successive years, tours,
cast changes and revivals between 1996 and 2000. A constant being that the
message of the play remained the same – that Ireland and indeed Irish drama
(and their numerous definitions) were being redefined through Beauty Queen and through the subsequent Leenane Trilogy which would premiere
again in Galway in 1997.
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| Beauty Queen on Broadway, 1998 |
The long suffering daughter, Maureen Folan, questions her
controlling and ageing mother, Mag, in the opening scene, "What country do
you live in?" Mag responds: "Galway". The short exchange would
sum-up neatly the questioning of region and nation, tradition and modernity, home
and place that the play examines in wickedly black humour and violence and
which has captivated audiences around the world for two decades. As Fintan
O'Toole wrote in an article for the programme of the world premiere of the play
in 1996, entitled "Changing Places":
"That unbounded Ireland is
the one which Martin McDonagh belongs to, and the one in which Druid has always
been willing to play itself. It is a nation that cannot be taken as read but
must continually be written up, and acted out"
This year, 2016, Beauty
Queen turns twenty years of age. It is currently undergoing a major
revival, opening, as it first did back in 1996, at Galway's Town Hall Theatre,
before embarking on a major Irish and international tour. Marie Mullen,
co-founder of Druid Theatre Company, returns to the play and takes up the role
of Mag, first portrayed by the late Anna Manahan. The archive of Druid Theatre
Company, held at the Hardiman Library, NUI Galway, offers a fascinating insight into
the play and its production and reception. Among a wide range of records include programmes, press files, flyers and posters from all productions in Ireland, the U.K., America and
Australia. there are also files of photographs of productions and rehearsals; the prompt-script from
the 1996 production as well as a first-edition published edition of the script
and also a later edition which is signed by all cast members. Technical details such as design plans, sound and lighting plans, reveal how the play was a complex and challenging work to stage, as it presented and constructed a rain-sodden and wild west of Ireland setting. (Mag: "Wet Maureen?" Maureen: "Of course wet".) The archive of this play and of Druid itself is a unique resource to understand anew this play as we revisit McDonagh's Leenane, twenty years after we first did so.
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