All hail the ‘Queen’ in a cruel court

For a juicy example of mothering at its most aberrant, consider Mag Folan, the ghastly matriarch in Martin McDonagh’s “The Beauty Queen of Leenane,” now at the Celtic Arts Center. A resident of the remote Irish village of Leenane in 1989, Mag seems the very model of an isolated rustic dullard. However, underneath that deceptively impotent elderliness lies the insectile rapacity of a creature that habitually eats its young.

There’s no doubt that Mag has made quite a meal of her 40-year-old daughter, Maureen, these many years. No willing victim, Maureen appears to give as good as she gets. Masters of mutual torture, these trapped women make the air in their tiny cottage crackle with electrical hatred. But when an ardent suitor sparks the virginal Maureen, the charged atmosphere finally implodes, lethally.

The first of McDonagh’s notable Galway trilogy, “Beauty Queen” was written in a week by the then-25-year-old playwright. Despite a few structural warts, the play’s propulsive, impromptu quality is one of its chief virtues. In these characters’ mouths, base concerns are expounded with an offhand lyricism that is quintessentially Irish, as is the play’s bountiful gallows humor, that dry Gaelic mix of horror and hilarity.

Some have criticized the lack of a moral center in McDonagh’s work, but they have surely ignored the retribution that rains down on the inhabitants of this godforsaken cottage, so dismally well realized in director Brian Patrick Mulligan’s claustrophobic set. Mulligan’s intimate staging neatly melds lacerating performances with McDonagh’s spiky text.

The cast includes John McKenna as Maureen’s dangerously lonely admirer, Pato Dooley, and Seth Compton, as Pato’s comically punked-out younger brother, Ray.

As Maureen, the spinster who yearns for escape from her domestic hell, Kathleen M. Darcy is perfectly pitiable -- and perfectly pitiless. But the linchpin of the evening is Casey Kramer’s performance as the delightfully detestable Mag, a moral moron with a genius for malice and cruel self-interest. Stripped of sentiment, Kramer’s Mag is a portrait of a lifelong monster in scabrous old age -- and it’s a horror to behold.

*

‘The Beauty Queen of Leenane’

Where: Celtic Arts Center, 4843 Laurel Canyon Blvd., Studio City

When: 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays

Ends: Aug. 14

Price: $18

Contact: (818) 760-8322

Running time: 2 hours