La reina de la bellesa de Leenane

I like Martin McDonagh. His wild humor. His strange lyricism. His look I like his world of losers and short sentences, of delirious dialogues and violent situations to the point of paroxysm. I like his theatre, so cinematic. And also his films, both theatrical. I like to visit his Ireland, where it always rains and where, no matter how you look at it, there is never anything to screw up. It makes me pee and laugh in equal parts. I like his characters, at the same time so mean and so authentic, so wounded, so human. And I really like her heroines, McDonagh's angry women. McDonagh's Fighting Women. Mcdonagh's broken, lost, vengeful women. Like Frances McDormand in the recent "Tres anuncios en las afueras". Or like Maureen from "Leenane's Beauty Queen". Poor Maureen. Fragile Maureen. The fearsome Maureen. The protagonist of McDonagh's work that I like the most. And look I really like Martin McDonagh. It seems that he wrote it when he was twenty-six. Not one more. A sort of mix of John Ford, Samuel Beckett, Brian Friel and Quentin Tarantino. How can you write "Leenane's Beauty Queen" at only twenty-six years old? How could Maureen, poor Maureen, frail Maureen, fearsome Maureen, come up with herself at only twenty-six years old? Go find out. The thing is, no matter how you look at it, it already exists. She is still locked in a corner of a house in a corner of a village in a corner of the country where it seems that all the clocks have stopped. And where it never stops raining. There we will find her, Maureen. The one and only undisputed beauty queen of Leenane.

Julio Manrique