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Theater review: ‘The Beauty Queen of Leenane’ at the Lex Theatre

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An idiosyncratic charge attends ‘The Beauty Queen of Leenane’ at the Lex Theatre. We expect the Production Company to play around with established commercial fare, and this bluntly gripping revival of Martin McDonagh’s dark comic Irish take on maternal-filial entrapment fulfills expectations.

Director-designer August Viverito essentially honors this first of McDonagh’s trilogy of plays that transpire in Connemara, County Galway, Ireland. The action occurs in 1990, in the threadbare rural cottage where embittered, middle-aged Maureen Folan (Ferrell Marshall) is caregiver to Mag (Judy Nazemetz), her deceptively ailing mother. Their decades-long cat-and-mouse game reaches critical mass when Maureen sees one last chance at love with sensitive Pato Dooley (Alex Egan).

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Viverito maintains the script’s mix of sardonic humor, psychological mystery and sociological detail, but risks certain ambiguities with against-type casting. The washed-out frump and mountainous golem respectively associated with Tony-winning originators Marie Mullen and Anna Manahan give way to Marshall’s hearty, Juno-esque attractiveness as Maureen, and Nazemetz’s ornate, near-baroque pixilation as Mag.

This sometimes tips the scales in terms of who is manipulating whom, yet when these opponents go for the jugular, look out. Egan’s naturalism as the suitor and Rob Herring’s sarcasm as his kid brother (and voice of the real world) are entirely appropriate. Accordingly, the narrative twists unfold as though in a Hitchcock film, with ordinary objects -- a poker, a sexy black dress, an unopened letter -- accruing gasp-inducing weight. ‘The Beauty Queen of Leenane’ may not be groundbreaking theater, and it could stand more restraint in so small a space, but the play still manages to outguess the audience.

-- David C. Nichols

‘The Beauty Queen of Leenane,’ The Lex, 6760 Lexington Ave., Hollywood. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays. Ends Feb. 18. $25. (800) 838-3006. Running time: 2 hours, 25 minutes.

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