A fantastic set threatened to steal the show on the opening night of the Bermuda Musical & Dramatic Society?s (BMDS) play ?The Beauty Queen of Leenane?.

Irish playwright Martin McDonagh?s ?The Beauty Queen of Leenane?, opened on Monday and runs at the Daylesford Theatre until May 20.

The play is about a loopy, 40-year-old virgin who is stuck taking care of her elderly mother with no reprieve in sight.

?The Beauty Queen of Leenane? takes place entirely in the kitchen and front room of a cottage in Leenane, Connemara, County Galway, Ireland in the 1980s. There are three good words to describe these shabby looking rooms: ?wow, wow, and wow?.

It would have been easy to provide the standard sparse set, but BMDS didn?t go that way. Visually, the set was full of interesting objects. A framed picture of Robert and John F. Kennedy hung on the wall. Newspapers cluttered the coffee table (The Royal Gazette, of course.) A collection of milk bottles, and ancient looking pitchers took up counter space. Great special effects were used to make the set appear to be a working kitchen. The stove lit, water ran from the faucets, and a furnace crackled away. It wouldn?t really be Ireland without rain beating against the window, and BMDS had that too!

Mary Brier on lighting, set designers Kevin McDonald, Debbie Mackenzie, Margaret Potts and Carol Birch, and Andrew Frith on sound deserve congratulations for a first rate job.

The cast also deserve lots of applause. The Beauty Queen of Leenane was performed by Polly McKie as Maureen Folan the bored, crazy daughter, Sheilagh Robertson as Mag Folan, the mean old mother, Richard Fell as Patto Dooley, Maureen?s boyfriend, and Andrew Bacon as Ray Dooley, Patto?s nephew and Maureen?s neighbour.

It would be hard to say who outshone who in terms of acting. Richard Fell is a veteran local actor and gave his usual top-notch performance. Drama teacher Polly McKie is relatively new to the Bermuda stage but easily kept up with Mr. Fell. Ms Robertson stumbled once, but it only made her character seem more natural.

One of the things that made the play work was the good chemistry between the four players. This rapport was evident in an earlier Royal Gazette interview with Ms McKie and Mr. Bacon. Throughout the interview there was a great deal of good-natured bantering.

?I think that?s why I always remember my lines,? said Mr. Bacon at one point during the interview.

?Do you now?? said Ms McKie with a laugh. ?I hadn?t noticed.?

This carried over into the play where there was good chemistry between all of the characters, particularly between Ms Robertson and Ms McKie.

Not only did the cast carry their parts well, but they also carried the Irish accent well.

Some of them already had a leg up in this department. Andrew Bacon is Irish anyway. Polly McKie is Scottish. Sometimes the Irish accent was almost too good and the audience needed a translator. It was like listening to play in a language you took in high school. For example, during intermission there was a great deal of discussion about what a ?bahbee? was.

?Oh ?baby...?,? said one audience member. ?I was wondering what on earth that could be.? Unfortunately, by that time the context was forgotten. None of this is a fault of the actors, but the level and speed of audience comprehension is something to be considered.

The mood of the play became progressively more brooding and sinister as the action picked up speed. The moral element to ?The Beauty Queen of Leenane? was complex. The characters made some disturbing decisions. At first Maureen appeared to be the poor put-upon daughter, but halfway through the play the audience?s sympathy veered strongly towards Mag, and then touched briefly on Patto. By the end sympathy flew away not having found a suitable perch. All the characters were all guilty of some act of moral indecency, although, admittedly, some moral indecencies were a trifle worse than others.

News of a great play tends to travel quickly. In this case, ?The Beauty Queen of Leenane? was completely sold out several days before the show even opened. The only way to get a ticket is to show up before curtain, and hope that someone turns in a ticket.

The Beauty Queen of Leenane is the first in a trilogy set in Leenane. Others in the series include ?A Skull in Connemara? and ?The Lonesome West?. The writer, Mr. McDonagh was nominated for an Oscar in February in the Best Live Action Short Film category ?Six Shooter?.