Mcdonagh’S Characters Harsh, Yet Riveting

“Beauty Queen of Leenane” Friday, Jan. 28, Interplayers Ensemble

This celebration of Irish family bile is a smashing success in terms of sheer emotional impact and entertainment value, but the question remains: Is Martin McDonagh a playwriting genius or a bizarre fluke?

“The Beauty Queen of Leenane,” which opened Friday at the Interplayers Ensemble, contains insufficient evidence for either proposition.

However, this play has plenty of evidence to support the following:

Martin McDonagh, age 29, is one clever and devious smart aleck who has a knack for creating a grim world, inhabited by mean and often stupid characters who spout dialogue of almost breathtaking cruelty. And somehow, at least in this play, the effect is utterly riveting.

This is like “Dancing at Lughnasa,” crossed with “Pulp Fiction” and “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” Stepping into this play is a bit like going into a movie theater expecting to see a Jane Austen adaptation and instead getting “Psycho II.”

“The Beauty Queen of Leenane” has no actual knife murders but it does have some of the most hateful mother-daughter dialogue this side of “Mommy Dearest.” The play is about the middle-aged Maureen, who has been chained to her feeble but demanding mother, Mag, for the last 20 years. Their mutual resentment is not, shall we say, simmering below the surface.

In one typical exchange, the conversation turns to an ax murderer who has been in the news. Loving daughter Maureen tells her mother she’d like to run into that guy, bring him home, and point him in the direction of mom. Mom replies that the guy would probably kill Maureen, too. Maureen replies that she would have no problem with that, as long as the guy killed mom first so she could watch.

These are not jests. They are delivered with malicious intent, but we in the audience are given no other choice but to laugh at them anyway. For one thing, the playwright intends them as vicious black humor even if the characters are deadly serious. For another thing, if we can’t laugh at lines like this, we’re in for a long night.

This may help explain why a play so relentlessly mean was greeted with a long and loving standing ovation on opening night. As grim as it is, it possesses striking virtues as a piece of theater. The plot is mesmerizing and unpredictable. Danger lurks in every scene, a sense heightened nicely by director Robert Welch, who makes the hot stove and especially the fireplace poker into potent symbols of dread.

The play begins as a straightforward story of a middle-aged woman who feels her last chances of love and marriage slipping away. I suppose you could say the play stays true to that theme until the end, but it does so in ways that will take you completely by surprise. At intermission, I tried to imagine where the story would go in the second act and believe me, it went nowhere I guessed.

Best of all, the characters are fascinating despite their meanness (or maybe because of their meanness). You have never seen characters so damaged, at least not outside the average Stephen King novel, yet their very hatefulness is recognizably human. This play contains four characters, all of whom are exceptionally rich fodder for actors. Amy Perry landed the best part, Maureen, and she made the most of the opportunity. Her Maureen - a sad case of repressed, well, everything - becomes the character we root for, despite her rather shocking limitations as a human being. Perry makes her seem desperate, giddy, hopeful and sinister, all at once.

Joan Welch turns in an admirable performance as Mag. In Welch’s experienced hands, Mag is confused yet somehow sharp, tortured yet somehow the tormentor, sweet but somehow hateful. Welch conveys all of this while sitting in a rocker the entire play.

Scott Nath is an appalling neon-haired revelation as Ray, a dense Irish punk who belongs in a Quentin Tarantino movie. One of the hardest things for an actor to do is to play a completely stupid character, and Nath had us laughing both at Ray and with him.

Michael Denini deserves special praise for his portrayal of Pato, Maureen’s last chance at love. When he stands alone in a spotlight, reciting a letter he has written to Maureen, it is a tour de force of pure acting communication. We don’t merely hear his letter, we feel it. This scene also proved something that I was beginning to wonder about. McDonagh can indeed invent a good, decent loving character.

I can’t tell yet whether McDonagh is a novelty or the real thing, but maybe by the time I see another one of his plays, “The Cripple of Inishmaan” at the Spokane Civic Theatre, it will all be clear. Then again …

“The Beauty Queen of Leenane” continues through Feb. 19 at the Interplayers Ensemble. Call 455-PLAY for tickets.