Misy Childs as Maureen is held back by Lary Latham as Pato from Annette Roswnheck, who plays Mag in "The Beauty Queen of Leenane."

Tony Award-winner shows mother and daughter in a war of wills

No, they're not going to call it "The Beast of Burden Beauty Queen of Leenane."

When Heller Theater technical director Scott Heberling staged his wacky, what-the-heck-was-that domestic nightmare production of "Beast of Burden" in May, it featured fantastic chemistry and crisp dialogue between four characters played by Annette Rosenheck, Larry Latham, Jeff Murrin and Thomas Watts.

When Heberling held auditions two months later for "The Beauty Queen of Leenane," playwright Martin McDonagh's Tony Award-winning tale of an Irish woman's last chance at love and her mother's meddlesome ways, the director selected for the play's four roles Annette Rosenheck, Larry Latham, Jeff Murrin and . . . Oh, if only Thomas Watts were a 40-year-old woman.

"It wasn't planned that way," Heberling said, stressing that the local talent pool isn't that shallow. "But it did allow us to jump right in."

"With Mag (the play's 70-year-old mother), I had to start looking at someone younger who we'd have to age, and Annette could pull that off," he said of the actress who played about 20 years older in "Beast of Burden." "But she had strong competition. And Larry really had to work hard to get his role."

Once in place, the three cast members made a smooth transition into very different, very Irish characters and created a comfortable atmosphere for Missy Childs, the new member of the cast, Heberling said.

"It's almost like we didn't stop, kind of a `here we are again' kind of thing," he said. "And with Missy, having people around whom I trust has helped in getting her acclimated to what we're doing. The other three, they know my methods, the way I like to work and we were able to get down to business quicker."

"The Beauty Queen of Leenane" is the centerpiece to McDonagh's trilogy of tales from County Galway, Ireland. "Lonesome West," a tale of battling brothers who literally and figuratively destroy everything around them, was produced last winter by Theater Club, with Heberling as director.

"Beauty Queen" -- a black comedy -- tells of a tortured relationship between a manipulative mother, Mag, and her embittered daughter, Maureen, who live a sadly co-dependent life together in a shabby cottage in present-day Ireland. The old woman is not quite as infirm as she would have her daughter believe, but her complaining has kept Maureen by her side, caring yet resentful, into her 40s and with no prospects for a life of her own.

Until a rare social outing, that is, when Maureen goes to a party and hits it off with Pato, a man she's been acquainted with her entire life but has never really gotten to know. Maureen has felt trapped for so long and sees Pato as an escape; Mag sees Pato as the enemy and will do whatever is necessary to keep her daughter in unwilling servitude.

Where "Lonesome West" was more physical and at times also slapstick in nature, "Beauty Queen" is more psychological and perhaps more damaging, when one considers the depths to which these two women will go in order to destroy each other.

"It's almost insidious," Heberling said. "You know, two brothers beating on each other can be comical, but when people try to tear each other apart, that's real cruelty. This is more destructive."

And this is funny because . . .

"People are going to recognize their own relationships in this -- to an extreme, I would hope -- but they'll recognize a mother's capacity to work on guilting someone into things. Then there's the way a daughter reacts to her mother's needs, while resenting it as well," he said. "Mag plays it up, and it's obviously a ruse, and it's kind of funny watching her go to work. It's really very funny. And then there's a point at which it's not funny anymore."

What: Heller Theater's production of "The Beauty Queen of Leenane," by Martin McDonagh
When: 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday, also 8 p.m. Sept. 28-29, Oct. 4-6; 2 p.m. Sept. 30
Where: Heller Theater, 5328 S. Wheeling Ave.
Tickets: $5-$7, reservations may be made by calling 746-5065