Gamm Stages THE BEAUTY QUEEN OF LEENANE to Conclude 29th Season

The Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre (The Gamm) concludes its 29th Season with what promises to be a hilariously comic, aggressively dark and highly entertaining production of The Beauty Queen of Leenane by Martin McDonagh. The Irish-born playwright's multi-award-winning play, called "Riveting...and cruelly amusing" by The New Yorker, focuses on the suffocating relationship between forty-year-old spinster Maureen (Jeanine Kane) and her aging and increasingly needy mother, Mag (Wendy Overly)--two seriously flawed characters locked in mutual loathing.

The first play in the Irish-born playwright's "Leenane Trilogy" (including The Lonesome West and A Skull in Connemara), The Beauty Queen of Leenane set the stage for McDonagh's series of plays set in a darkly comic village in Ireland's County Galway, and launched his career as one of the most powerful voices writing for stage and screen ("In Bruges", "Seven Psychopaths"). Judith Swift, who directed The Gamm's 2006 production of The Lonesome West, once again takes on this claustrophobic world where violence is mundane and human interaction is painfully funny.

The Beauty Queen of Leenane runs from May 2 through June 2 at The Gamm Theatre, 172 Exchange St., Pawtucket, RI. Tickets: $36 and $45 (depending on day/time); preview and press performances (May 2-6) just $26. Discounts for subscribers, groups of 10 or more, seniors and students. Tickets at 401-723-4266 or gammtheatre.org