Beauty Queen Of Leenane opens Minerva season

A co-production between the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre and Chichester Festival Theatre, it opens in Chichester from September 3 to October 2 and London from October 9 to November 6.

Martin McDonagh is the writer of the award-winning blockbuster films Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and In Bruges.

Orla Fitzgerald will play Maureen. She is well known for playing Orla Walsh in all three series of BBC 3’s The Young Offenders and was nominated for Best Actress and Best Breakthrough Artist at the Irish Film and Television Awards for her portrayal of Sinéad in Ken Loach’s The Wind That Shakes The Barley.

Adam Best, recently seen in the Netflix series Giri/Haji, and previously in Peaky Blinders, Silent Witness and Holby City, will play Pato.

They will join award-winning stage, film and television actor Ingrid Craigie who has worked extensively in Ireland and the UK, West End and on Broadway and plays Eileen Pepper in the BBC drama Roadkill and Molly in television movie Forever In My Heart, and Kwaku Fortune who recently appeared as DS Marks in Line of Duty, Philip in Normal People and Julian in the feature film Animals.

Martin McDonagh is the multi-award winning writer and director of hit films Six Shooter, In Bruges, Seven Psychopaths and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, winner of four Golden Globes and two Oscars.

His debut play The Beauty Queen of Leenane premiered in Galway in 1996 and quickly 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 it won four Tony Awards. For theatre, he has also written the Tony Award nominated The Lieutenant of Inishmore and The Cripple of Inishmaan, and the Olivier Award winning Best New Play, Hangmen.

The Beauty Queen of Leenane is directed by Rachel O’Riordan, designed by Good Teeth Theatre, with lighting design by Kevin Treacy, music and sound design by Anna Clock, fight direction by Kev McCurdy and casting by Sam Stevenson.

In the mountains of Connemara, County Galway, Maureen Folan – a plain, lonely woman, tied to her manipulative and ageing mother, Mag – comes alive at her first and possibly last prospect of a new life. 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.