The Constructivists Arrive With ‘Beauty Queen of Leenane’

Jaimelyn Gray (Maureen Folan), Flora Coker (Mag Folan). Photo by Jake Badovski.

The Beauty Queen of Leenane is one of Martin McDonagh’s earlier plays (1996), marking him as an important dramatist. It is also a signature example of how he combines comedy and cruelty, explosive streams of character dialogue and bare, even violent emotions.

These detailed, mesmerizing studies of disquieting dysfunction have proven a great test of acting depth and character skills. They usually take place in the cramped corners of isolated landscapes, with volatile common people trapped inside fanciful aspirations and heritage (often Irish).

The Beauty Queen of Leenane (a title both ironic and sad) is actually a touchstone of maturity for theater companies – and by that measure The Constructivists company has arrived. This production stands out in casting choices. The program lists 15 technical insiders. Except for the time it takes in the one-scene blackouts to reset the stage, the pace plays with our minds and the director trusts the audience with the plot twists and insights.

After years of struggling to find playing spaces and financial stability, The Constructivists has moved its key shows into the 100-seat Studio Theatre in the Broadway Theatre Center, still often occupied by the Milwaukee Chamber Theatre, which has left several weeks open when it performs elsewhere. The Constructivists took those weeks and gallops with them.

One wise move was turning to Milwaukee acting legend James Pickering to direct and imbue the cast with respect and understanding of the Irish brogues, plus his attention to the details of lifelike acting without false sentimentality.

The company’s founder and artistic director, Jaimelyn Gray, has returned to acting for one of the major roles – Maureen, the spinster frustrated by her wasted life and fading attractiveness, spoon-feeding her brittle, demanding mother Meg.

For that key role of Meg, Pickering turned to another Milwaukee legend of some 50 years (like he is) — Flora Coker, a founding member of Theatre X. She may creep like a loon in her dotage. She may fool you with her trembling, feeble manner – but that’s acting! Coker is conducting a master class in how to shoot daggers with her eyes, convey a nasty quip, make infirmity a weapon and wickedly pounce on any opening.

There are two important supporting players, but it is the mother and daughter who are mainly conducting a fascinating battle of hatred, threats, payback and invisible chains. When Maureen seeks to escape into the arms of a lover, Pato, discarding her work clothes to get down and dirty in sexy dress and underwear, she is aiming her randiness as much at Meg as at Pato, who is sincere but understandably frightened by the female battling.

(Incidentally, there is reason for the play to have an intimacy choreographer, Laura Sturm. The Irish slang and the hate-filled circumstances are quite adult and produce much of the audience reaction.)

Matt Specht plays Pato Dooley as a strong Irish laborer with subdued tenderness and a warm, accurate Irish accent, thus locking in the most important qualities the role demands. He also has a fine solo scene sending letters home from the England where he works.

His younger brother, Ray Dooley, often serves as exasperated reluctant messenger — but look out for his invective. He is a typical McDonagh story device — angry, not too bright, but assertively outspoken and self-centered, with some of the play’s biggest laugh lines. It’s a great part for Leo Madson, directed quite effectively to play Dooley at full sneer and full brogue.

At first I worried that Pickering’s rightful concern with the rhythm and speed of the Irish dialects was muddying Gray’s vocal choices, but she cured me quickly of that concern, offering a lucid, tough, passionate and yet tender portrayal of a woman pushed over the edge. The audience is trapped by her behavior – we see her plunge into romance, plunge into anger and even an earned murderous fury. We see the danger yet sympathize with the circumstances.

Coker also startles us with the hold Meg has on her daughter, her delight in manipulation – and we sense even before Meg does that she is underestimating Maureen’s rage.

I won’t give away the actual moments of shock and expectations in the story, but please note how Pickering values the strength of silence in the pacing.

The production exposes McDonagh’s distinct demons. He’s Anglo-Irish given the place of his birth, but Irish playwrights are some of the best England has to offer while at the same time chafing over England’s control of the island. McDonagh’s poetic gifts have a bitter underside – he is drawn to the dark places of the human spirit.

He has pretty much abandoned the stage for writing and directing movies – the Oscars certainly took note of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017), and The Banshees of Inisherin (2022). While dialogue is still key in both formats, there are issues of getting inside the mind and using locations that may explain his change to film while deepening his earlier reputation as a playwright.

In this play, we are in an isolated corner of Ireland where characters speak about the beauty and defiant character of the country. Film opens up the land beyond stage doorways that lead outside and into other rooms. The Constructivists is deliberately making us feel claustrophobic and focused on the mundane objects that will come back in the storytelling (tins of porridge above the oven, a smelly sink, a rocking chair too near a primitive furnace, a battered TV, a radio playing old Irish tunes).

In those early plays McDonagh was solving construction issues in a theatrical way – letters unfolding dreams and instructions, exposition to explain years of domestic combat and disappointment. Each medium has its strengths, but the character insights vary in techniques — and that may clarify what mental processes led McDonagh to now prefer film.

With Thursday to Saturday performances at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 4 p.m., The Beauty Queen of Leenane runs through April 12. Community support is available in the lobby. Tickets are available at  www.theconstructivists.org or the Broadway Theatre Center box office (414) 291-7800.

The Beauty Queen of Leenane Gallery

Dominique Paul Noth served for decades as film and drama critic, later senior editor for features at the Milwaukee Journal. You’ll find his blog here and here.