Review by Simon Jenner, April 10th 2025
Martin McDonagh in Southwick? It can only be Nettie Sheridan. McDonagh’s debut play from 1996, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, with the Southwick Players comes to The Barn Southwick directed by Nettie Sheridan till April 12th.
The title’s one given to Maureen, daughter of Mag Forlan, by her admirer Pato. It’s a four-hander study of an attractive 40-year-old woman’s frustrations, mental distress and imposed co-dependency with a mother: a mother intent on having her, the unmarried one of three sisters, skivvy forever. It builds with slabs of stasis: a spinster intent on a last shot at love, which is offered, or at least losing her virginity. And a mother intent on thwarting her.
Debbie Creissen. Photo Credit: Lynsey Nicol
Mag Forlan (an ever-watchful, skirling Debbie Creissen, also co-producer) is circled with scarcely concealed venom by Maureen Forlan – Donegal-born Jacqueline Jordan’s also accent coach. Maureen feeds lumpy Complan or the wrong biscuits or throws it away when Mag complains: Maureen’s already a hungry ghost, circled and tethered to her ma. Did I mention humour?
There’s a lot of Turgenev-like duetting, as first the two women interact, then Creissen and the younger brother Ray Dooley (alert rising star Jimmy Schofield), played here as a boy full of frustrations, long resentment at a missing ball, and without that the last jump of self-awareness to escape: only moving to London, or drug-filled Manchester might offer escape. Employed as emissary from his elder brother, you can see the dynamics of sly Mag trying to thwart Maureen several miles off: or could if there wasn’t fog. Luckily at first, Mauren intercepts the truth despite her mother and heads off to a party.
It’s only when she returns the fourth character Pato Dooley (Guy Steddon) arrives that we get the single threesome of the play. Pato’s at first a charming 40-something, burly but attractive, trying it on with a young second cousin and then his sincere pull towards Maureen. Steddon reveals layers: at first bluff, bewildered even but not yet showing Pato’s grace and sensitivity under pressure that he will. Pato’s thrilled and shocked at Maureen’s suggestions, so there’s the first threesome on stage the next morning, as Maureen taunts her new-found sexuality.
Jordan’s phenomenally truthful here, and at the same time slightly unknowable. You see every syllable of her desire, cavorting and frisky as her fragility becomes more apparent in ever wilder speeches; with Steddon’s Pat both attracted, and in front of Mag, slightly appalled. And yet, as Creissen ups the stakes, tries to ward off Pato by revealing facets of Maureen’s past, you see his stature rise. It’s Creissen’s stark moment, one she seizes with Mag’s lumbering relish.
At the opening of Act Two Steddon is quietly spellbinding as, spot-lit as from another place, he speaks his letter (as speech, it doesn’t sound like one): one of huge importance. Here his essential tenderness, sensitivity to every facet of Maureen’s reactions and fears is laid out and given an invitation the equivalent of a huge bear-hug. But it’s also one of copper-bottomed sincerity. It’s the standout of the night, but there’s one other to come.
Guy Steddon Jacqueline Jordan and Debbie Creisssen. Photo Credit: Lynsey Nicol
We might predict some scenes but not others, neither the shocking ones nor the role of Schofield’s sulky Ray, revealing still more resentment spooled from his past: like Maureen he’s frustrated. Less aware, but with more chances, being a man, at least potentially. But his demons too are born of lifelong resentments because nothing else happens. As Pato puts it: ”You can’t kick a cows arse here without everyone knowing it… for years.” Schofield’s Ray is sullen, his natural brio as an actor struck in deep mattes.
As Andrew Kay noted on opening night, there were some initial sound challenges with the marvellously orchestrated rain, TV (Sheridan with Jeff Woodford) and the soft accents, but these have been addressed. You quickly attune to the authentic, never too-heavily accented delivery of the four characters. What’s clearly apparent is the solidity of Martin Oakley’s set, a cottage with skylight to heighten the lighting and effects from Martin Oakley and again Sheridan. Notably a stove of different fires, giving off an amazing kick of peaty fire wafting back. Total immersion. The sky itself gradates from bleak through sunsets and sunrises, and an outside of suggestive fog. A table foregrounds for one or two functional reasons, and the stove with the virtually immobile Creissen- bar darting panther-like movements when no-ones looking – divides the static part of the front parlour (though with stairs behind it) with the window and an opening to escape flirtation and frolicking against the table. Milla Hills’ costumes captures the grungy nylon youth gear with stripes, the slinky slip and black dress and casuals Maureen wears, to the trad wear of the older characters
Jacqueine Jordan and Debbie Creissen. Photo Credit: Lynsey Nicol
Photo Credit: Lynsey Nicol
The Beauty Queen of Leenane earned an Olivier nomination, then more awards and finally four Tonys when it transferred to Broadway in 1998. Reminding us as Maureen remarks: “The Yanks love the Irish.” This explosion of a new talent was shocking: the dark Irish cousin of in-yer-face dramatists like Sarah Kane and Mark Ravenhill and a world from Conor McPherson announced a slew of seven plays before McDonagh moved more into film after 2003’s The Pillowman, claiming it was more democratic. Though he’s occasionally returned, notably with Hangmen in 2015, it’s in his films that McDonagh’s unique silver stiletto of a gift is found. Including In Bruges from 2006, and from 2022, The Banshees of Inisherin, derived, many think, from the one play McDonagh didn’t produce from that magnificent opening seven, The Banshees of Inisheer.
There are moments where the young McDoangh has telegraphed perhaps too quckly and other plot-points are painfully crystalline from miles off despite the fog. Nevertheless McDonagh’s maturity emerges in the final scenes. Jordan’s Maureen has already acted once to elicit information and you feel she might again, and gain act to snatch joy. An arc of blazing storytelling shows Jordan scorch her low horizons like a meteor, full of lyric distraction and sparks flying off as she descends vocally.
There’s a final confrontation, a stand-off with Schofield and a denouement with Jordan morphing herself. Can she break free? And how? And when she does, do you feel she has other options? You have to listen carefully too as she details how she might go about it.
Sheridan brings this area challenging plays, and sometimes lighter pieces. For that, the set, effects and authenticity brought by a superb cast – Jordan and Steddon particularly – we must be in her debt. This is stark theatre. Some will hate McDonagh, some already love him. I’d say you must see this, where it all started.
Stage Manager/DSM Pete Dilloway, Radio Announcement Recordings Sam Nixon, Lighting Operation Martin Oakley, Ben Manning, Sound Operation Jeff Woodford
Workshop Team Martin Oakley, Len Shipton, David Otway, Ron Lainchbury, Dean Common, Simon Armes, Ray Mason, Joe Eggleston, Liz Slough,
Properties/Dresser Jo Hall, Make up Chris Horlock, Rehearsal Prompt Sally Diver,
Publicity Sam Harrington-Lowe, Anita Jones, Frank Horsley, Martin Oakley.
Graphics Programme Poster Photo Gary Cook, Promotional Photography Lynsey Nicol Photography, Director Headshot Photography Miles Davies Photography, Poster Model Pip Cook.
Special Thanks to Barn FOH, Southwick Society, Margaret Skeet, Paul Sheridan, The Halls from Lewes.
Photo Credit: Lynsey Nicol
