Chatting with the Artists About ‘The Beauty Queen of Leenane’

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Photo courtesy of The Constructivists

The Contructivists rehearse 'Beauty of Queen Leenan'

(left to right) Jaimelyn Gray, Matt Specht and Flora Coker rehearse 'Beauty of Queen Leenan.'

‘Nothing!” Jaimelyn Gray exclaimed when I asked what I could tell the readers about her company’s production of The Beauty Queen of Leenane without spoiling anything. This dark comedy by British-Irish playwright Martin McDonagh opens March 28 at the Broadway Theatre Center.

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Photo courtesy of Jaimelyn Gray

Jaimelyn Gray

Jaimelyn Gray

Gray is the intrepid founder and artistic director of The Constructivists. She’s acting in this production, reprising the last role she played at the end of her 10-year long jaunt as an actor in Chicago, before moving with her husband and daughter to Milwaukee in 2018 and founding her own theatre company. A Manitowoc native, she wanted to live closer to her roots.

Her company’s first season featured McDonagh’s play The Pillowman. “I consider him one of the most influential writers to The Constructivists’ body of work,” she says. “He’s a really influential writer to me of this artform of dark comedy that the company is built on. We’ve been really great at finding more new work in that genre these past few seasons, so the more classic pieces have lagged behind. It was kind of time to do McDonagh again.”

Secret Plot?

Why keep the plot secret? “Because it’s so good,” she says. “It’s so smart. You think it’s going one way, and then it goes the other way. And that’s one thing that we love around here, when something takes a hard right. It starts off as a good old family dysfunctional drama, and then it turns, well …”

“Nightmarish!” offers Jim Pickering, the legendary Milwaukee actor who’s directing the show. He’d acted for the company last season, the first Equity actor to do so. We’re at a pre-rehearsal meeting—Pickering, Gray, and my beloved longtime colleague Flora Coker of Theatre X renown, who’s acting in the show.

“Nightmarish is a good word,” Jaimelyn continues. “It’s an isolated cottage in the mountains, and a mother and daughter in a co-dependent relationship of care-giving. I play Maureen, a 40-year-old, lonely woman feeling trapped by her circumstances.”

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Photo courtesy of Flora Coker

Flora Coker

Flora Coker

“I’m the mother,” Coker says. “I’m totally dependent on my daughter. She has to stay. I can’t live without her. I can’t let it happen.”

What threatens the relationship? “Romance,” Pickering answers. “Love in the person of a youngish man. And there you go. We’ve gotten to the center of the action. McDonagh is a master of the form,” he continues. “He takes classic tropes in theatre and absolutely rips their hearts out, turns them on their heads, makes them funny, and shoves them in. He has a great deal of wit and—almost in Samuel Beckett terms—kind of bleak outlook on life.” Beckett, of course, is the playwright of Waiting of Godot.

Coker adores the dialogue. “I’ve had a wonderful time just getting from sentence to sentence,” she says. “My character can’t keep my mouth shut. I say way too much about everything.”

Regarding the acting, she says: “Everything is hard for me now because I’ve just turned 80 years old. But I’m still here and I’m having a good time. I’m progressing. I remembered that I’m a good actor, and I’m just going to try to be there. I have a lot of help. (She nods toward the others.) And these difficult scenes that are rat-a-tat back and forth are huge fun. I’m trying to get the words exactly right because when you do, it’s beautiful music.”

Pickering agrees. “McDonagh’s gifted at writing the way people talk in the West of Ireland. The Irish talk better than us. They’ve always needed to. They never had any weapons. They had words—English words—that they would use against the English enemy. Because they were enslaved. Language was where their freedom was. I mean, for the last 150 years or so, the best writers in the English language have been Irishmen. The playwrights from Wilde, to Synge, to O’Casey to Brian Friel to Martin McDonagh, they’re writing the best plays.” And Beckett, of course.

Gray on Dark

Gray emphasizes the dark in “dark comedy.” “But even at its darkest it’s still funny,” she says. “I just want to pick plays that will kick people in the gut. That’s what Milwaukee seems to really enjoy from us.  I hope to continue that. I think that if more people liked theatre, the world would be a better place.”

Prolific Milwaukee actor Matt Specht plays Pato Dooley, the fellow who threatens to steal the middle-aged daughter from her mom. Young Leo Madson, with First Stage credits, plays Pato’s twenty-years younger brother. “He’s winged Mercury,” Pickering says. “He delivers messages. And in classic theatre style, things happen to the messages. Misunderstandings ensue which lead both to comic and not-so-comic consequences.”

And that’s about as much as I can tell you. Tickets are just $20. Gray says I shouldn’t read the script before I see it.

Performances are March 29-April 12, Thursdays-Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 4 p.m., at the Broadway Theatre Center’s Studio Theatre, 158 N. Broadway. Contains adult subject matter. For information or tickets, email info@theconstructivists.org or call 414-858-6874.