At best, costumes in a show situate characters in time and place, and give us clues as to the lives lived by these personages when they're offstage. In Martin McDonagh's The Beauty Queen of Leenane, Katrina Stevenson's costumes managed both these tasks potently. In this tale of a mentally unbalanced lonely young woman and her vicious, deceitful mother, clothes were more than just coverings. The old pink bathrobe that Diana Rogers as mother Mag wore eloquently told of this miserable character's carelessness and vulgarity. And there was a world of meaning in the clothes of Colleen McDonnell as desperate daughter Maureen: When she had nothing to hope for, her togs were mismatched, but when she thought she might entice handsome Pato (Ned Averill-Snell) into her life, she switched to a short, sexy black dress. Pato's cable-knit sweater and brown workpants were also just right for this working-class hero, as was the soccer jersey worn by Pato's undependable brother Ray (David M. Jenkins). There's something emotionally and morally downscale about Beauty Queen's world, and Stevenson's costumes captured and communicated this feeling precisely. Which is all that one can ask.
This article appears in Sep 25 – Oct 1, 2003.