It is an alarming blend of hysterical comedy, grand melodrama, horrifying violence, and the bleakest tragedy.  That said it is well worth seeing.

Set in 1989 in the small village of Leenane (pronounced leh-nan) in Connemara, County Galway, Ireland, the play centres on the life of Maureen Folan, a 40-year-old virgin who is the sole caregiver to her 70 year-old mother Mag.  Two sisters have escaped into marriage and family life, but Maureen, with a history of mental illness, is trapped in a small, bleak cottage and in an overly dependent, seriously dysfunctional relationship with her mother.

In the course of the play, the Folan cottage is visited by the brothers Ray and Pato Dooley.  Many years apart in age, Ray is an irrepressible and irresponsible young man, while Pato is a middle-aged construction worker fed up with having to live and work in England in order to earn a living wage.  

The glimmer of a romance between Maureen and Pato sparks up, then sputters out with ultimately disastrous results.

The play rocketed playwright Martin McDonagh to fame at age 25 when it opened in the West End in 1996.   By 1998 he became the first playwright since William Shakespeare to have four of his plays produced professionally in London in a single season.  A school drop-out, McDonagh wrote “Beauty Queen” in just eight days.

Born in London, he has become known as a great Irish playwright in spite of the fact that his knowledge of life in the rural parts of western Ireland about which he writes is based on recollections from summer vacations and the tales told by his Galway-born father.

Daragh Carville’s weird play Family Plot will also be performed on the Town Hall stage this Drama Festival.

Inside their family grave, three generations of Kerrs are dead and buried, but condemned not to rest.  They didn't get on in life and they certainly don't get on in death.  They continue to battle out the arguments of their lifetimes, until the youngest member of the family arrives in the grave, a fourth generation and the last of the line.  It is only with Emer's arrival that the family begin to realise that they must accept the cost and consequences of how they lived before their story of forgotten love and shocking betrayal can finally be resolved and they can find some kind of peace.

The Festival concludes with two classic plays, the first of which is Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

The play begins with the brief appearance of a trio of witches and then moves to a military camp, where the Scottish King Duncan hears the news that his generals, Macbeth and Banquo, have defeated two separate invading armies—one from Ireland, led by the rebel Macdonald, and one from Norway. Following their pitched battle with these enemy forces, Macbeth and Banquo encounter the witches as they cross a moor. The witches prophesy that Macbeth will be made thane (a rank of Scottish nobility) of Cawdor and eventually king of Scotland. They also prophesy that Macbeth’s companion, Banquo, will beget a line of Scottish kings, although Banquo will never be king himself.  The witches vanish, and Macbeth and Banquo treat their prophecies sceptically until some of King Duncan’s men come to thank the two generals for their victories in battle and to tell Macbeth that he has indeed been named thane of Cawdor.  The previous thane betrayed Scotland by fighting for the Norwegians and Duncan has condemned him to death.  Macbeth is intrigued by the possibility that the remainder of the witches’ prophecy—that he will be crowned king—might be true, but he is uncertain what to expect.  He visits with King Duncan, and they plan to dine together at Inverness, Macbeth’s castle, that night.  Macbeth writes ahead to his wife, Lady Macbeth, telling her all that has happened.

Lady Macbeth suffers none of her husband’s uncertainty.  She desires the kingship for him and wants him to murder Duncan in order to obtain it.  When Macbeth arrives at Inverness, she overrides all of her husband’s objections and persuades him to kill the king that very night.  He and Lady Macbeth plan to get Duncan’s two chamberlains drunk so they will black out; the next morning they will blame the murder on the chamberlains, who will be defenceless, as they will remember nothing.  While Duncan is asleep, Macbeth stabs him, despite his doubts and a number of supernatural portents, including a vision of a bloody dagger.  When Duncan’s death is discovered the next morning, Macbeth kills the chamberlains—ostensibly out of rage at their crime—and easily assumes the kingship.  Duncan’s sons Malcolm and Donalbain flee to England and Ireland, respectively, fearing that whoever killed Duncan desires their demise as well.

Fearful of the witches’ prophecy that Banquo’s heirs will seize the throne, Macbeth hires a group of murderers to kill Banquo and his son Fleance. They ambush Banquo on his way to a royal feast, but they fail to kill Fleance, who escapes into the night. Macbeth becomes furious: as long as Fleance is alive, he fears that his power remains insecure.  At the feast that night, Banquo’s ghost visits Macbeth.  When he sees the ghost, Macbeth raves fearfully, startling his guests, who include most of the great Scottish nobility.  Lady Macbeth tries to neutralize the damage, but Macbeth’s kingship incites increasing resistance from his nobles and subjects.  Frightened, Macbeth goes to visit the witches in their cavern.  There, they show him a sequence of demons and spirits who present him with further prophecies: he must beware of Macduff, a Scottish nobleman who opposed Macbeth’s accession to the throne; he is incapable of being harmed by any man born of woman; and he will be safe until Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane Castle.  Macbeth is relieved and feels secure, because he knows that all men are born of women and that forests cannot move. When he learns that Macduff has fled to England to join Malcolm, Macbeth orders that Macduff’s castle be seized and, most cruelly, that Lady Macduff and her children be murdered.

When news of his family’s execution reaches Macduff in England, he is stricken with grief and vows revenge.  Prince Malcolm, Duncan’s son, has succeeded in raising an army in England, and Macduff joins him as he rides to Scotland to challenge Macbeth’s forces.  The invasion has the support of the Scottish nobles, who are appalled and frightened by Macbeth’s tyrannical and murderous behaviour.  Lady Macbeth, meanwhile, becomes plagued with fits of sleepwalking in which she bemoans what she believes to be bloodstains on her hands.  Before Macbeth’s opponents arrive, Macbeth receives news that she has killed herself, causing him to sink into a deep and pessimistic despair.  Nevertheless, he awaits the English and fortifies Dunsinane, to which he seems to have withdrawn in order to defend himself, certain that the witches’ prophecies guarantee his invincibility.  He is struck numb with fear, however, when he learns that the English army is advancing on Dunsinane shielded with boughs cut from Birnam Wood.  Birnam Wood is indeed coming to Dunsinane, fulfilling half of the witches’ prophecy.

In the battle, Macbeth hews violently, but the English forces gradually overwhelm his army and castle.  On the battlefield, Macbeth encounters the vengeful Macduff, who declares that he was not “of woman born” but was instead “untimely ripped” from his mother’s womb (what we now call birth by cesarean section).  Though he realizes that he is doomed, Macbeth continues to fight until Macduff kills and beheads him.  Malcolm, now the king of Scotland, declares his benevolent intentions for the country and invites all to see him crowned at Scone.

Finally there is A Woman of No Importance by Oscar Wilde.

The scene is set in an English country house - Hunstanton (Lady Hunstanton's property).  The curtains open to the terrace where we are introduced to Lady Caroline engaging in conversation with their American Puritan guest Hester Worsley.   The discussion is joined by the powerful, charming and charismatic gentleman, Lord Illingworth who has offered the post of secretary to the fortunate Gerald Arbuthnot.   Gerald's mother is invited to join the party. After arrival she realizes this offer is more complicated than it seems, as Illingworth is the father of her illegitimate son, Gerald, who refused marriage all those years ago.  The tension mounts when Mrs. Arbuthnot is caught between telling her son the truth and allowing him to go with the man who spoilt her life.  Gerald finds out about his mother's past in a spectacularly Wildean moment of melodrama - after trying to kill Lord Illingworth for kissing Hester Worsley - a woman with whom he is very much in love.

The play concludes with Gerald, Hester and Mrs. Arbuthnot leaving England for America to live in a society where she will not be judged so harshly.

I find to my chagrin that I must be out of Newry for the greater part of this year’s Drama Festival programme so for the first time in decades my wife and I will not be season ticket holders.

We hope to catch as many performances as possible and will make up for the rest at Belfast’s Ulster Drama Finals.