I’ve called The Beauty Queen of Leenane the best drama I’ve seen this year.
It seems that I’m not the only one who thinks so.
Originally staged at the Peterborough Theatre Guild this past winter, director Jerry Allen’s production of the Martin McDonagh dark comedy took home some of the top awards at the Eastern Ontario Drama League’s 2014 Full Length Festival in April.
The play was nominated in eight categories and won in three of them, against some very worthy competition from Belleville, Ottawa, Kingston, Lindsay, Northumberland, and Prince Edward County.
Alex Saul as Maureen Folan won the Leonard Beaulne Memorial Trophy for “Best Actress in a Major Role” and Scott Drummond took home the Margaret White Award “For Acting Excellence, Male”. The show also took the top prize, the Leslie M. Frost Award for “Best Production.”
The next stop for the production — which also features Patricia Young as Mag Folan and Luke Foster as Ray Dooley — is Sarnia, where they’ll be representing Eastern Ontario at the 2014 Theatre Ontario Festival from May 14th to 18th.
They’ll be competing against three other winning productions from the rest of Ontario. The festival will be adjudicated by celebrated director and performer Beatrix Quarrie.
If you missed The Beauty Queen of Leenane the first time around, you still have two chances to see this award-winning show before it moves to the competition in Sarnia. The company has been back in rehearsals over the past few weeks, refining and tweaking the show, and will be doing two encore performances on Monday May 12th and Tuesday May 13th at 8 p.m. at the Peterborough Theatre Guild. Tickets will be available at a reduced price of only $10 — which is a great price for award-winning entertainment.
Both a dark comedy and psychological thriller, The Beauty Queen of Leenane created quite a buzz from shocked audiences in February. Read my review here.
This production is about to make its mark on all of Ontario, proving once again that Peterborough is a hub for high-quality arts and entertainment. Please come out and support this talented cast and crew and see what all the talk is about! This is a great opportunity to cheer on some of the finest talents in Peterborough.
For more information, visit www.theatreguild.org. Make sure to check out Alex Saul’s special Beauty Queen of Leenane blog at peterboroughbeautyqueen.wordpress.com.
