Two-and-a-half years after it was briefly seen in Dublin, Martin McDonagh's multi-award-winning play, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, reappeared in the capital last night at the Gaiety Theatre.
Beauty Queen has been one of the greatest successes for Galway's Druid Theatre Company which was co-producer of the play with the Royal Court Theatre in London. The work won a number of awards in Britain, including one from the Writers' Guild.
As part of McDonagh's Leenane Trilogy, it was performed in Dublin's Olympia Theatre during the annual theatre festival in October 1997 and won an award for the best Irish production. In 1998 it went to Australia and then moved to New York where, after a two-month run, it transferred from an off-Broadway venue to the Walter Kerr Theatre on Broadway; it won four Tony awards and played to capacity audiences for almost a year. After its three-week run at the Gaiety, it goes on tour around Ireland and England until mid-May.