Spokane Civic Theatre connoisseurs will recognize Jamie L. Suter’s name for her work in the theater’s costume department. They might be surprised however to see her name front and center as she moves into the role of director on “The Beauty Queen of Leenane.”

Suter had directed previously while living in New York and helmed a few Playwrights’ Festival pieces over the years, but Martin McDonagh’s “The Beauty Queen of Leenane” marks her first full production as a director since moving to Spokane.

Suter double majored in directing and costuming in college, with life giving her more work with the latter before she started directing pieces in the Playwrights’ Festival.

Before she was attached as director of “The Beauty Queen of Leenane,” Suter joked with Civic Executive Director Jake Schaefer that she should audition for the role of Maureen because she herself is a spinster. Schaefer then asked Suter if she would be interested in directing the show. She said she was and submitted an application explaining how she would shape the show.

Suter hadn’t heard of “The Beauty Queen of Leenane” before the show was selected as part of Civic’s season, though she was familiar with some of McDonagh’s films, which include “In Bruges,” “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” and “The Banshees of Inisherin.”

She was excited for the chance to direct nonetheless, as it gives her the opportunity to “see the bigger picture of theater.”

“While costume design is fun and you see that picture, being a director, you have to see all of the technical aspects, and that’s something that I really like,” she said.

“The Beauty Queen of Leenane” opens Friday and runs through May 18 at Spokane Civic Theatre. The play is the first in playwright Martin McDonagh’s Leenane Trilogy, which also includes “A Skull in Connemara” and “The Lonesome West.”

“The Beauty Queen of Leenane” takes audiences to the early 1990s in Leenane, Connemara, Ireland home to 40-year-old spinster Maureen Folan (Ruth Elliott) and her 70-year-old mother Mag Folan (Melody Deatherage). Maureen is Mag’s caretaker, as she has a bad back and a burnt hand.

One day while Maureen is out of the house, Ray Dooley (Joshua Baig) stops by and invites both women to a farewell party for his uncle, who is visiting from America. Mag has trouble remembering Ray’s message, so he writes it down for her.

Once he leaves, however, Mag throws the note in the furnace. Maureen returns home soon after and gets upset with Mag for being so dependent on her. Having met with Ray as she was returning home, Mag also gets mad at Maureen for being dishonest and not telling her about his visit and decides to punish her mother.

At Ray’s party, Maureen meets Pato Dooley (Jon Jordan), a construction worker who lives in London and is Ray’s older brother, and brings him home with her. Pato tells Maureen that, though they’ve hardly spoken to each other, he thinks of her as “the beauty queen of Leenane.”

The next morning, Mag is shocked to learn that her daughter, dressed only in her underwear, has had a man over and accuses Maureen of having purposely poured hot oil on her hand. She then reveals to Pato that she is legally responsible for Maureen after she signed her out of a mental institution.

While Mag goes to look for papers that prove what she’s shared, Maureen tells Pato that her mother hurt her hand while cooking unsupervised and that she did in fact have a nervous breakdown 15 years earlier while working in England. She claims her mother often lies about the past because she thinks Maureen can’t tell fact from fiction after her hospitalization, but Pato said he still cares for her.

Maureen becomes upset when Pato suggests she get dressed and Mag returns to the room having found her papers, but Pato ignores her and tells Maureen he will write to her.

To say much more reveals the twists and turns McDonagh has peppered through the rest of the show, though you can start to build a picture of the show by looking at the content warning that warns of strong language, sexual references, explicit scenes of violence and abuse, and themes of loneliness and mental health.

Suter calls “The Beauty Queen of Leenane” complex, intense and challenging for performers, who must excel at both ends of the darkly comic spectrum. When casting Maureen, she wanted someone who could bring a little sinisterness to the role, and when thinking about Mag, Suter wanted someone who could play grating well.

Deatherage, as Mag, gave Suter a new take with each read and brought a lot of life into the character. Suter was unfamiliar with Elliott, who is making her Spokane Civic Theatre debut as Maureen after moving to town in the fall, but was quickly impressed with her audition.

As the play goes on, it becomes apparent that Mag and Maureen seem to enjoy making each other miserable. With Deatherage and Elliott, Suter worked to expand on Maureen and Mag’s backstories.

Why, for example, is there never any mention of a husband or father figure?

“We don’t really know those answers,” Suter said. “We can speculate all we want to develop and make those characters more real, but I think ultimately, when we look at it, having to live with Mag for Maureen as a child, Mag definitely shaped some of how Maureen’s behavior was. The amplification of Maureen’s behavior becomes more apparent as time goes on.”

It’s a parasitic relationship, Suter said. In other words, misery loves company.

Suter also worked with Baig, as Ray, and Jordan, as Pato, on their roles in the show and the lives of Mag and Maureen. Suter believes Ray and Pato give the women glimpses of how life could be.

“I would say Pato may represent a possibility, and his brother Ray is more like a reflection,” she said.

All four actors worked with Sara Edlin-Marlowe to perfect their Irish accents.

While directing, Suter is still handling costumes for “The Beauty Queen of Leenane.” As the play is set primarily in Maureen and Mag’s home, the costumes are quite realistic and relaxed. So much so, Suter hopes audiences hardly notice them.

“Being in a slice-of-life play, if you’re noticing the costumes or the props or things like that so much, the goal is for that stuff to blend in,” she said. “We want to feel like we’re actually living in their lives.”

As often happens with characters in McDonagh’s work, Mag and Maureen experience the highs and lows that life has to offer, in effort, Suter said, to push audiences to experience emotion, even ones they might be uncomfortable with.

“Martin McDonagh has a tendency to do a lot of intense dramas, but then, like I said, there’s this levity to it that comes through the dialogue in places, and that’s really representative of what life is like,” Suter said. “It’s not all dark, it’s not all light. There’s moments that are dark that you make a joke and you can get a little reprieve from that. But I think, regardless, this is the type of work that makes the audience feel.”

If You Go

“The Beauty Queen of Leenane”

When: Friday through May 18. 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays

Where: Spokane Civic Theatre, 1020 N. Howard St.

Cost: $15/students; $30/adults.

Read the full article here

Article by Azaria Podplesky

Photos by Ryan Wasson