Leicester’s Curve is to present its third Martin McDonagh play in five years, The Beauty Queen of Leenane.
The play charts the life of Maureen Folan, a 40-year-old virgin, her relationship with her manipulative mother Mags and her brush with romance in the mountains of County Galway, Ireland.
When Pato, a middle-aged man, returns from working in England, Maureen gets a last chance for love. However, as their relationship flourishes, a shocking and disturbing train of events is set in motion.
Directed by Curve’s artistic director Paul Kerryson, The Beauty Queen of Leenane follows McDonagh’s The Pillowman in 2009 and The Lieutenant of Inishmore in 2010.
Curve is staging the play in a co-production with the Mercury Theatre, Colchester. Earlier this year the two collaborated on Melvyn Bragg’s The Hired Man.
Michelle Moran plays Maureen Folan. Her extensive stage credits include Brian Friel’s Dancing At Lughnasa at Northampton Royal and Derngate and Oxford Playhouse; Othello, Don Carlos and Volpone for the RSC; Hecuba at Brooklyn Academy of Music and Kennedy Centre, Washington, USA; and Pericles and A Little Night Music at the National Theatre.
Nora Connolly plays Mags. This will be her second collaboration with Paul Kerryson after McDonagh’s The Cripple of Inishmaan at Leicester Haymarket.
Her previous theatre credits include Brian Friel’s Translations at Bristol Old Vic) and J M Synge’s Playboy of the Western World, The Sound of Music and The Plough and The Stars by Sean O’Casey at Leicester Haymarket.
Stephen Hogan plays Pato. He appeared in Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along at Derby Playhouse in 2007, The Importance of Being Earnest, Macbeth, Translations, Angels in America, St Joan and Mutabilitie at the Abbey Theatre, Peer Gynt at the National Theatre and Kerryson’s production of Richard III at Leicester Haymarket.
Andrew Macklin (Ray) has also appeared in King Lear, A Picture of Dorian Grey and Three Sisters at the Abbey Theatre, Neil LaBute’s The Mercy Seat at York Theatre Royal, The Only True History of Lizzie Finn at Southwark Playhouse in 2012 and Leo Butler’s I'll be the Devil for the RSC in 2008.
The Beauty Queen of Leenane will run in Curve’s Studio from Friday (18 October) until Saturday 9 November before moving to the Mercury Theatre Colchester from 13 until 23 November.