The Beauty Queen of Leenane

The darkly comic and unsettling Irish tale by Academy Award-Winner Martin McDonagh

A 6-time Tony Award-Nominated play by Academy Award-Winning playwright, screenwriter, producer, and director, Martin McDonagh, recently known for blockbusters films like Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017), and The Banshees of Inisherin (2022). Directed by Dorset’s Resident Playwright and Emmy and Pulitzer Prize Nominee Theresa Rebeck.

In this darkly comic Irish tale, 40-year-old spinster Maureen Folan is good and stuck in the house she grew up in, caring for her aging mother, Mag. Mag is a nightmare and their mutual antagonism hits a new level when Maureen's first, and possibly final, chance at love suddenly appears. Who’s most vulnerable? Who’s scheming the most? Who’s crazy? Is anyone? The laughably dysfunctional relationship of these two isolated souls in rural Ireland comes to a boiling point when the possibility of romance, or even survival, sets in motion a train of tragically funny yet heartbreaking events.

“In the telling, this play seems as clear as day. When you look back on it, it’s the shadows that you can’t stop thinking about.”

— Ben Brantley, The New York Times