Everyman Palace, Cork

It’s always best to treat the plays of Martin McDonagh with a light hand, but it is possible that director Michael Cabot’s touch for this London Classic Theatre production of

The Beauty Queen of Leenane

is a little too gentle. Kerry Bradley’s design presents a decaying kitchen as a metaphor for a decaying community, and in this setting the domestic drama of unstable but sparky Maureen and her petulantly tyrannical mother is played with considerable dramatic intelligence.

Typically the text is imbued with a comic spirit ranging from sunny to implacable darkness; but this is a matter of pitch, of striking the scary, subversive key that keeps the audience guessing and enthralled. That key is never quite sounded in this performance, one reason being the tendency of the two main players, Paddy Glynn and Connie Walker as mother and daughter respectively, to speak towards the rear of the stage. It’s not merely a matter of projection, although that needs to be improved too. While Walker in particular runs her lines together at times, forgetting the importance of phrasing in McDonagh’s writing, she manages to meet the challenge of making her character both credible and sympathetic.

The impact of the piece is strengthened by her heartfelt transmission of her sense of loss. All four cast members are more than competent, but Alan DeVally as Ray seems closest to McDonagh’s casual anarchy, an element Cabot might have emphasised more.

Until Feb 13, then on national tour until Mar 6