Beauty Queen opens in Solstice

Since the opening of the Solstice Arts Centre in 2006, the Navan Theatre Group has made the new venue its home and has risen magnificently to the challenge of doing justice to this wonderful setting. Each of the last six full-length drama productions by the Group (Sive, Philadelphia Here I Come, A Streetcar Named Desire, Lady Windermere's Fan, Translations and The Playboy of the Western World) has filled the Solstice auditorium to capacity throughout its run, and has showcased unusually high standards of acting, direction and set design. A Navan Theatre Group production has become an eagerly-awaited event. This year the Group is proud to present Martin McDonagh's multiple award-winning and controversial play The Beauty Queen of Leenane. A dark tragi-comedy, it tells the story of Maureen Folan, a lonely, damaged woman in her early forties, marooned in a Connemara cottage with her ageing and manipulative mother, whom she grudgingly looks after in an atmosphere of recrimination and barely suppressed rage. Her fading hopes of a better life are unexpectedly boosted by a drink-fuelled amorous encounter with Pato Dooley, a local man returned from the building sites of London on a brief visit. However, her mother's malign intervention ensures that the relationship with Pato doesn't develop, and sparks a sequence of events that leads to an horrific climax. The cast of four includes Ciara Cassoni who will play the central character, Maureen. Ciara has appeared several times at the Solstice, including as Bridget in Translations, Lady Stutfield in Lady Windermere's Fan and Stella Kowalski in Streetcar. Mary Tuite will play Maureen's mother, Mag. This will be Mary's first appearance in an NTG production, but she brings a wealth of experience gleaned as leading lady with the Dunshaughlin Players. Robbie Clarke plays Pato, his biggest role to date, but he has already put together an interesting portfolio of cameo parts in one-act and full-length plays. Maurice Walsh will play Pato's brother Ray. Maurice has five years' professional experience under his belt. His previous appearance on the Navan stage was as Shawn Keogh in Playboy. A hallmark of past NTG productions has been the quality of their direction in terms of passion, vision and attention to detail. This year's production will see Nigel Ryan occupy the director's chair, for the first time. Nigel is a teacher in Navan and a hurler with O'Mahonys, but he is best known to theatre-going audiences for the leading parts he has taken in recent NTG productions, including Gar O'Donnell in Philadelphia, Doalty in Translations, and Christy Mahon in Playboy. As he sees it, the main challenge for him in directing The Beauty Queen is to strike the right balance between its savage irony, its surreal humour and its frightening, almost casual violence. The Beauty Queen of Leenane is Martin McDonagh's first and best-known play. When it premiered in 1996, Fintan O'Toole of the Irish Times heralded it as one of the most auspicious debuts by an Irish playwright, and went on to describe it as 'a vibrantly original mixture of absurd comedy and cruel melodrama'. The opportunity to see and enjoy the Navan Theatre Group's staging of this path-breaking work should not be missed. 'The Beauty Queen of Leenane' runs from 21st to 24th November in the Solstice Arts Centre, Navan.