Pair of Irish plays offer lessons wrapped in sorrow

Honestly, life can seem so bleak sometimes, and it doesn’t help that the two plays offered this month by Philadelphia’s two Irish-oriented theater groups focus on lives filled with sorrow and struggle.

And yet …

And yet, there are hopeful lessons to be learned from “The Beauty Queen of Leenane,” from the Irish Heritage Theatre (March 7-23), and “Iphigenia in Splott,” a Welsh play from Inis Nua Theatre Co. (March 12-30).

In “The Beauty Queen,” the lesson may be the power of kindness in the face of loneliness and pain, and in “Iphigenia,” the power of community when otherwise, it is so easy, too easy, to judge.

Prizewinning Irish playwright and film director Martin McDonagh’s “The Beauty Queen of Leenane” teaches us “to be aware of the quiet suffering and loneliness in so many lives,” said Peg Mecham, who directs the play and is also Irish Heritage Theatre’s artistic director.

“Can we offer a smile or a kind word — all those small things that are easy to overlook which can really be important? We underestimate how significant they can be,” she said.

“The Beauty Queen” tells the tale of a 40-year-old woman who has only been kissed twice. She lives with her 70-year-old mother in a life full of mutual resentment and bitterness. The two spite and double-cross each other, sabotaging each other’s chances for happiness, amidst betrayals and disappointments.

From left to right: Kirsten Quinn as Maureen and Brian Anthony Wilson as Pato in “The Beauty Queen of Leenane,” presented by the Irish Heritage Theatre. (Courtesy of Kitcaptures)

“It’s a sympathetic and tragic tale of people who live lives in which they are trapped and unable to see another way,” Mecham said. “It’s a very quiet story and a universal experience. I think Irish theater does that really well, telling the smaller personal stories — in a smaller community, in what appears to be a normal, typical, quiet life, yet has the same complexity and the same relationship to power and longing.

“Even in what would appear to be an idyllic Irish village, people are leading lives of enormous, quiet pain,” she said. “You are left wondering if there had been smaller kindnesses extended to these characters, how different their lives would have been.”

In Gary Owen’s “Iphigenia in Splott,” “we meet Effie in the midst of hard living,” said veteran Philadelphia actress Campbell O’Hare, who plays her in a one-woman show.

“She is a woman without purpose. She hasn’t figured out what she’s doing here. She knows she has value, but feels it will be wasted on herself. She is caught in a cycle of drugs, drink and sex to distract her from that loss and emptiness,” O’Hare said. People judge her harshly.

Like many women, Effie believes she will find transformation in a relationship with a man, but what really transforms her is a sacrifice she makes for her community, one that may never get applauded.

“In places like Splott where Effie is, there are so few resources, but there is also hope,” O’Hare said. “The good days are behind them, but more is possible, if they start looking up and taking care of each other.”

While the Irish Heritage Theatre focuses on producing Irish and Irish-American classics, Inis Nua’s mission covers the entire British Isles — Ireland, Wales, England and Scotland.

For its St. Patrick’s Day offering, Inis Nua slated “Can’t Forget About You,” by David Ireland, part of its Northern Ireland reading series. That show, about a young man’s fling with an older woman, is sold out. The next show in the series, “The Honey Trap” by Leo McGann, takes place on April 21 at the Louis Bluver Theatre at the Drake.