Lyric To Stage The Beauty Queen of Leenane
Major revival of award-winning play coming this autumn
The Lyric Hammersmith Theatre is to stage a major revival of The Beauty Queen of Leenane, the Tony Award-winning play by Martin McDonagh.
The play was a massive success when performed in the West End and the playwright went on to write and direct the Golden Globe winning Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.
The new production will be directed by the Lyric’s Artistic Director Rachel O’Riordan in a new co-production with Chichester Festival Theatre. The play will open at Chichester’s Minerva Theatre before transferring to the Lyric from 9 October to 6 November.
It will star Ingrid Craigie who appeared in Roadkill and The Cripple of Inishmaan in the West End and Broadway, a play which forms part of McDonagh’s Leenane trilogy, and Kwaku Fortune who was in Normal People and recently featured in Line of Duty as DS Marks.
The Beauty Queen of Leenane was Martin McDonagh’s debut play which premiered in Galway in 1996, produced by Ireland’s Druid Theatre Company, and established him as one of Ireland’s most exciting new writers. The West End transfer received an Olivier Award nomination for Play of the Year and on Broadway the play received six Tony Award nominations and won four.
It concerns Maureen Folan, a plain, lonely woman, tied to her manipulative and ageing mother, Mag who lives in Connemara. A prospect of a loving relationship presents itself but Mag has other ideas; and her interference sets in motion a train of events that leads inexorably towards the play’s breath-taking conclusion.
The Beauty Queen of Leenane was originally announced as part of Rachel O’Riordan’s inaugural season as Artistic Director of the Lyric for Autumn 2020 but was postponed due to the pandemic.
The production will be designed by Good Teeth Theatre, with lighting design by Kevin Treacy, music and sound design by Anna Clock and casting by Sam Stevenson.
Martin McDonagh. Picture: Euan Kerr
The Lyric’s reopening season will launch in summer 2021 with the world premiere trilogy Out West featuring plays by Tanika Gupta, Simon Stephens and Roy Williams running from 18 June to 24 July, followed by Heart of Hammersmith, the Lyric’s first large-scale community play celebrating West London stories which runs from 12-14 August.
Tickets for the Lyric are on sale today at www.lyric.co.uk
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May 15, 2021