This play is a blend of black comedy, melodrama, horror and bleak tragedy.  The story is set in an Irish village Leenane, Connemara in 1989.  The entire play takes place in a shabby, poorly lit kitchen, resulting in a claustrophobic sense of entrapment.

The play centres on the life of Maureen Folan, a 40-year-old spinster who takes care of her 70 year-old, selfish and manipulative mother Mag.  Sisters of Maureen have escaped into marriage and family life, but Maureen, with a history of mental illness, is trapped in a seriously dysfunctional relationship with her mother.

In the course of the play, the Folan cottage is visited by Pato Dooley and his younger brother Ray.  Pato is a middle-aged construction worker fed up with having to live and work in England, disappointed by the limitations and loneliness of his life.  The sameness of its day-to-day is tedious also for his brother, a non-threatening "bad boy" Ray.

The glimmer of a last-chance romance between Maureen and Pato sparks up in the first act, and continues in the second one with a notable monologue of Pato.  The plot, full of deceptions, secrets and betrayals interspersed with turnabouts keeps surprising the audience.  Hopes are raised just to get dashed.

The Beauty Queen of Leenane opened in 1996 in Galway, Ireland. It was produced by the Druid Theatre Company in Galway and it subsequently had a successful run in London and won four Tony Awards in New York.