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Mommie dearest?

‘Beauty Queen’ explores kitchen sink dysfunction drama

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Sarah Marshall, Kimberly Gilbert, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, Round House Theatre, theater, gay news, Washington Blade
Sarah Marshall, Kimberly Gilbert, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, Round House Theatre, theater, gay news, Washington Blade

Sarah Marshall, left, as Mag, and Kimberly Gilbert as Maureen in ‘The Beauty Queen of Leenane.’ (Photo by Danisha Crosby; courtesy Round House Theatre)

‘The Beauty Queen of Leenane’
Through Sept. 15
Round House Theatre
4545 East-West Highway
Bethesda, Md.
$35-$50
240-644-1100
roundhousetheatre.org

Anglo-Irish playwright Martin McDonagh has either seen some very scary stuff or has a darkly wild imagination. Let’s hope it’s the latter. In his intense, 1996 black comedy “The Beauty Queen of Leenane,” the relationship between old Mag Folan and caretaker/daughter Maureen makes the sisters’ bond in “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” look downright cozy.

Now playing at Round House Theatre in Bethesda, “Beauty Queen” (the first of McDonagh’s trilogy set in Leenane, a tiny hamlet on the west coast of Ireland) is rife with horror and laughs. Lucky for us, the production is helmed by director Jeremy Skidmore who leads a top-notch cast in plumbing the tragicomedy’s many facets, ensuring what could be an over-the-top grand guignol is something all too fathomable.

At 40, Maureen (Kimberly Gilbert) is a virgin who’s never been in a relationship. Her days are spent waiting on her demanding mother Mag (Sarah Marshall) in their isolated stone cottage. It’s a tedious and lonely existence, but mother and daughter pass the time playing games — mind games of the sick and twisted variety. For the pair, life is an unending power struggle. Now and then Maureen gets out, usually for food shopping, but always her prison-like situation is waiting.

Maureen’s possible salvation appears in the form of neighbor Pato Dooley (Todd Scofield). He’s home on a visit from his construction job in England when he and Maureen get together for a night of boozy amour. But naturally controlling mama Mag isn’t having it, and her evil determination to quash the budding romance kicks off a string of sneaky betrayals and terrifying retributions.

As mother and daughter, Marshall and Gilbert are superb. Marshall, who is gay, nails Mag’s many moods: infantile, charming, diabolical and palpably rotten (whatever it takes to finagle her own way). As Maureen, Gilbert wonderfully displays a range of toughness and vulnerability. Scofield gives a solidly touching performance as the thoroughly decent Pato, a plain laborer who definitely is in over his head with these crazy Folan women. And Joe Mallon is appropriately obnoxious as Ray, Pato’s younger brother.

McDonagh is a masterful storyteller. He draws us in slowly. Initially it seems Mag is your garden variety spoiled old woman with a bad hip who likes her tea hot and porridge without lumps, and that Maureen is the harassed skivvy with a sharp tongue — her every chore is performed with a string of hilarious threats and profanities. But as the play unfolds, it becomes clear that this less-than-functional household isn’t simply the result of a mother and daughter spending too much time together. While her two sisters eluded Mag’s grasp via marriage, Maureen, with a history of breakdowns, remained at home as her mother’s sole caretaker, not an enviable role under the best of circumstances.

Kudos to the actors and dialect coach Leigh Wilson Smiley: the Irish accents are thick and consistent (and to me, sound authentic). For the first five or so minutes of the play, in fact, I panicked. What are they saying? But with a little concentration and settling into the rhythm of the talk, all was soon well. Mag and Maureen talk a lot about Complan, Kimberleys (a powdered supplement and cookies), and make myriad other alien references, so prior to curtain it helps to peruse the glossary provided in the program.

Though a lot of action takes place offstage, the entire play is set in the cottage’s shabby kitchen designed by Tony Cisek. With its ancient wood stove, dwarf fridge and stinky sink (that doubles as a loo for Mag), it’s easy to get a sense of Maureen’s unenviable workaday life. Though not small, the room is claustrophobic — ripe for explosion.

The play’s title becomes a sweet in-joke shared between Maureen and Pato, happily and then sadly evoking what they briefly had and even more so what might have been. “Beauty Queen” is a play that affects long after the lights go black.

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Photos

PHOTOS: Capital Pride Pageant

Court crowned at Penn Social event

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From left, Zander Childs Valentino, Sasha Adams Sanchez and Dylan B. Dickherson White are crowned the winners at a pageant at Penn Social on April 26. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

Eight contestants vied for Mr., Miss and Mx. Capital Pride 2024 at a pageant at Penn Social on Saturday. Xander Childs Valentino was crowned Mr. Capital Pride, Dylan B. Dickherson White was crowned Mx. Capital Pride and Sasha Adams Sanchez was crowned Miss Capital Pride.

(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)

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Theater

Round House explores serious issues related to privilege

‘A Jumping-Off Point’ is absorbing, timely, and funny

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Cristina Pitter (Miriam) and Nikkole Salter (Leslie) in ‘A Jumping-Off Point’ at Round House Theatre. (Photo by Margot Schulman Photography)

‘A Jumping-Off Point’
Through May 5
Round House Theatre
4545 East-West Highway, Bethesda, Md.
$46-$83
Roundhousetheatre.org

In Inda Craig-Galván’s new play “A Jumping-Off Point,” protagonist Leslie Wallace, a rising Black dramatist, believes strongly in writing about what you know. Clearly, Craig-Galván, a real-life successful Black playwright and television writer, adheres to the same maxim. Whether further details from the play are drawn from her life, is up for speculation.

Absorbing, timely, and often funny, the current Round House Theatre offering explores some serious issues surrounding privilege and who gets to write about what. Nimbly staged and acted by a pitch perfect cast, the play moves swiftly across what feels like familiar territory without being the least bit predictable. 

After a tense wait, Leslie (Nikkole Salter) learns she’s been hired to be showrunner and head writer for a new HBO MAX prestige series. What ought to be a heady time for the ambitious young woman quickly goes sour when a white man bearing accusations shows up at her door. 

The uninvited visitor is Andrew (Danny Gavigan), a fellow student from Leslie’s graduate playwriting program. The pair were never friends. In fact, he pressed all of her buttons without even trying. She views him as a lazy, advantaged guy destined to fail up, and finds his choosing to dramatize the African American Mississippi Delta experience especially annoying. 

Since grad school, Leslie has had a play successfully produced in New York and now she’s on the cusp of making it big in Los Angeles while Andrew is bagging groceries at Ralph’s. (In fact, we’ll discover that he’s a held a series of wide-ranging temporary jobs, picking up a lot of information from each, a habit that will serve him later on, but I digress.) 

Their conversation is awkward as Andrew’s demeanor shifts back and forth from stiltedly polite to borderline threatening. Eventually, he makes his point: Andrew claims that Leslie’s current success is entirely built on her having plagiarized his script. 

This increasingly uncomfortable set-to is interrupted by Leslie’s wisecracking best friend and roommate Miriam who has a knack for making things worse before making them better. Deliciously played by Cristina Pitter (whose program bio describes them as “a queer multi-spirit Afro-indigenous artist, abolitionist, and alchemist”), Miriam is the perfect third character in Craig-Galván’s deftly balanced three-hander. 

Cast members’ performances are layered. Salter’s Leslie is all charm, practicality, and controlled ambition, and Gavigan’s Andrew is an organic amalgam of vulnerable, goofy, and menacing. He’s terrific. 

The 90-minute dramedy isn’t without some improbable narrative turns, but fortunately they lead to some interesting places where provoking questions are representation, entitlement, what constitutes plagiarism, etc. It’s all discussion-worthy topics, here pleasingly tempered with humor. 

New York-based director Jade King Carroll skillfully helms the production. Scenes transition smoothly in large part due to a top-notch design team. Scenic designer Meghan Raham’s revolving set seamlessly goes from Leslie’s attractive apartment to smart cafes to an HBO writers’ room with the requisite long table and essential white board. Adding to the graceful storytelling are sound and lighting design by Michael Keck and Amith Chandrashaker, respectively. 

The passage of time and circumstances are perceptively reflected in costume designer Moyenda Kulemeka’s sartorial choices: heels rise higher, baseball caps are doffed and jackets donned.

“A Jumping-Off Point” is the centerpiece of the third National Capital New Play Festival, an annual event celebrating new work by some of the country’s leading playwrights and newer voices. 

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Nightlife

Ed Bailey brings Secret Garden to Project GLOW festival

An LGBTQ-inclusive dance space at RFK this weekend

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Ed Bailey's set at last year's Project Glow. (Photo courtesy Bailey)

When does a garden GLOW? When it’s run by famed local gay DJ Ed Bailey.

This weekend, music festival Project GLOW at RFK Festival Grounds will feature Bailey’s brainchild the Secret Garden, a unique space just for the LGBTQ community that he launched in 2023.

While Project GLOW, running April 27-28, is a stage for massive electronic DJ sets in a large outdoor space, Secret Garden is more intimate, though no less adrenaline-forward. He’s bringing the nightclub to the festival. The garden is a dance area that complements the larger stages, but also stands on its own as a draw for festival-goers. Its focus is on DJs that have a presence and following in the LGBTQ audience world.

“The Secret Garden is a showcase for what LGBTQ nightlife, and nightclubs in general, are all about,” he says. “True club DJs playing club music for people that want to dance in a fun environment that is high energy and low stress. It’s the cool party inside the bigger party.”

Project GLOW launched in 2022. Bailey connected with the operators after the first event, and they discussed Bailey curating his own space for 2023. “They were very clear that they wanted me to lean into the vibrant LGBTQ nightlife of D.C. and allow that community to be very visibly a part of this area.”

Last year, club icon Kevin Aviance headlined the Secret Garden. The GLOW festival organizers loved the its energy from last year, and so asked Bailey to bring it back again, with an entire year to plan.

This year, Bailey says, he is “bringing in more D.C. nightlife legends.” Among those are DJ Sedrick, “a DJ and entertainer legend. He was a pivotal part of Tracks nightclub and is such a dynamic force of entertainment,” says Bailey. “I am excited for a whole new audience to be able to experience his very special brand of DJing!”

Also, this year brings in Illustrious Blacks, a worldwide DJ duo with roots in D.C.; and “house music legends” DJs Derrick Carter and DJ Spen.

Bailey is focusing on D.C.’s local talent, with a lineup including Diyanna Monet, Strikestone!, Dvonne, Baronhawk Poitier, THABLACKGOD, Get Face, Franxx, Baby Weight, and Flower Factory DJs KS, Joann Fabrixx, and PWRPUFF. 

 Secret Garden also brings in performers who meld music with dance, theater, and audience interactions for a multi-sensory experience.

Bailey is an owner of Trade and Number Nine, and was previously an owner of Town Danceboutique. Over the last 35 years, Bailey owned and operated more than 10 bars and clubs in D.C. He has an impressive resume, too. Since starting in 1987, he’s DJ’d across the world for parties and nightclubs large and intimate. He says that he opened “in concert for Kylie Minogue, DJed with Junior Vasquez, played giant 10,000-person events, and small underground parties.” He’s also held residencies at clubs in Atlanta, Miami, and here in D.C. at Tracks, Nation, and Town. 

With Secret Garden, Bailey and GLOW aim to bring queer performers into the space not just for LGBTQ audiences, but for the entire music community to meet, learn about, and enjoy. While they might enjoy fandom among queer nightlife, this Garden is a platform for them to meet the entirety of GLOW festival goers.

Weekend-long Project GLOW brings in headliners and artists from EDM and electronic music, with big names like ILLENIUM, Zedd, and  Rezz. In all, more than 50 artists will take the three stages at the third edition of Project GLOW, presented by Insomniac (Electric Daisy Carnival) and Club Glow (Echostage, Soundcheck).

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