FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 12, 2012

For a second time this season, early demand has prompted Lantern Theater Company to announce an immediate extension of an upcoming production. Martin McDonagh's The Beauty Queen of Leenane, directed by Lantern Associate Artistic Director Kathryn MacMillan and featuring Mary Martello and Megan Bellwoar in the lead roles of Mag and Maureen Folan, will now run January 10 - February 10, 2013 (press opening Wednesday, January 16, 7 p.m.). [A full performance schedule follows in the fact sheet below.]

The Beauty Queen of Leenane is McDonagh's first produced play, a Tony Award-winning satire of the skirmishes and silent feuds between mothers and daughters. In a small town in western Ireland, spinster Maureen Folan lives with her diabolically helpless mother Mag. Maureen's married sisters escaped long ago, leaving Maureen stuck at home, chafing against Mag's cunning manipulations and lamenting her missed chances. When romance blossoms between Maureen and the sweet, uncomplicated Pato Dooley, it pits mother against daughter, setting the stage for an explosive, wildly funny, and deeply affecting finish.

"For me, Beauty Queen's compelling characters represent McDonagh at his best, which is why it is my favorite of his plays" says director Kathryn MacMillan, who also co-directed the Lantern's 2011 production of A Skull in Connemara. "McDonagh's world is populated by people who lack a moral center, instead they get caught up in tiny, petty grievances. This is the source of McDonagh's comedy, which is howlingly funny. But there is poignancy, too, because his characters feel isolated even when they are confined together. That is, until their grievances reach the boiling point - and explode. At its heart, Beauty Queen is an extreme mother -daughter relationship, but it is wonderfully familiar and truthful, as well."

Tickets for The Beauty Queen of Leenane are $20 - $38 and are available online at lanterntheater.org or by calling the Lantern Box Office at 215-829-0395. $10 student rush tickets are available 10 minutes before curtain with valid ID; cash only. Additional discounts are available for seniors and groups of 10 or more. Lantern Theater Company is located at St. Stephen's Theater, 10th & Ludlow Streets in Center City Philadelphia.

About the Cast & Creative Team
Mary Martello will star as diabolically helpless mother Mag Folan in a role that is quite a departure for a leading Philadelphia actress perhaps best known for glamorous musicals. Winner of five Barrymore Awards and 2010 recipient of the prestigious Lunt Fontanne Fellowship, Martello previously appeared at the Lantern as Gertrude in Hamlet in 2009. She has worked in theaters throughout the Philadelphia area including Arden Theatre Company, The Wilma Theater, People's Light & Theatre, 1812 Productions, and many productions at Walnut Street Theatre where she is currently starring as Mrs. Paroo in The Music Man.

Megan Bellwoar makes her Lantern debut as Mag's frustrated spinster daughter, Maureen. Charlie DelMarcelle and Sean Lally, who appeared at the Lantern in last season's Romeo and Juliet as Mercutio and Romeo, return as the Dooley brothers, Pato and Ray, respectively.

The team invested in creating a hysterically horrifying world of violence includes set designer Dirk Durossette (A Skull in Connemara), costume designer Maggie Baker (The Liar, New Jerusalem), lighting designer Shon Causer (The Liar, New Jerusalem), sound designer Daniel Perelstein (The Island, Romeo and Juliet), and fight director J. Alex Cordaro (The Liar, Romeo and Juliet, Private Lives).

About the Leenane Trilogy
Beauty Queen marks the Lantern's third and final production of McDonagh's Leenane Trilogy, all of which are set in Leenane, a small village in Connemara, County Galway on Ireland's ragged western coast. Unsheltered from the Atlantic's buffeting winds, Leenane squats in the mud where a coastal road meets the N59 highway. It's a routine spot for Connemara travelers to pass through, usually on their way to someplace else. McDonagh's Leenane is populated with gossips and troublemakers, outcasts and deviants. They pepper their conversations with curses and insults, besmirch their neighbors' names, and trade blows mere moments after shaking hands. Not even the local priest is above reproach, the town's moral state having driven him to drink. The other two plays in the Trilogy are set chronologically after The Beauty Queen of Leenane. In A Skull in Connemara, produced by the Lantern in 2011 with Stephen Novelli, a man has the job of exhuming skeletons in an overcrowded graveyard with his newest customer being the wife he was accused of killing years before. In The Lonesome West, which the Lantern produced in 2007 with Anthony Lawton and Ross Beschler, two brothers bicker in the aftermath of the supposedly accidental fatal shooting of their father. Characters from each play are discussed in the others as their fates all intertwine in this small, intense hamlet.

About the Playwright
An award-winning playwright, filmmaker, and screenwriter, Martin McDonagh was born in London to Irish parents and is considered one of the most important living Irish playwrights, though he has lived most of his life in England. McDonagh's first six plays are located in and around Ireland's County Galway where he spent his holidays as a child, and are separated into two trilogies: The Leenane Trilogy, which includes The Beauty Queen of Leenane (1996), A Skull in Connemara (1997), and The Lonesome West (1997); and The Aran Islands Trilogy, which includes The Cripple of Inishmaan (1997), The Lieutenant of Inishmore (2001), and The Banshees of Inisheer (never published, at McDonagh's insistence). His first non-Irish play, The Pillowman, is set in a fictitious totalitarian state and premiered at London's National Theatre in 2003. His most recent play, set in the U.S., is A Behanding in Spokane (2010). McDonagh is a four-time Tony Award nominee (The Beauty Queen of Leenane, The Lonesome West, The Pillowman, and The Lieutenant of Inishmore) and the winner of both an Academy Award (Best Live Action Short Film for Six Shooter) and a British Independent Film Award (Best Screenplay for In Bruges). He is the recipient of a British Academy of Film and Television Arts Award (Best Original Screenplay for In Bruges), a Laurence Olivier Award (Best New Play for The Pillowman), and a Critic's Circle Theatre Award for Most Promising Playwright. McDonagh has also garnered both the Irish Playwrights and Screenwriters Guild Awards for Best Film Script for In Bruges. His most recent film, Seven Psychopaths, was released in October 2012.

2012/13 Season
Lantern Theater Company will continue its 2012/13 season with William Shakespeare's Henry V, directed by Charles McMahon and starring Ben Dibble (March 14 - April 14, 2013) and the Philadelphia Premiere of Heroes by Tom Stoppard, adapted from Gérald Sibleyras' Le Vent Des Peupliers and directed by M. Craig Getting (May 16 - June 9, 2013).

The Beauty Queen of Leenane
By Martin McDonagh
Directed by Kathryn MacMillan

Dates:
January 10 - February 10, 2013
Preview Performances on January 10 - 15
Opening night is Wednesday, January 16, 7:00 p.m.

Performances:
Thu, 1/10 at 7:00 p.m.
Fri, 1/11 at 7:00 p.m.
Sat, 1/12 at 8:00 p.m.
Sun, 1/13 at 8:00 p.m.
Tue, 1/15 at 7:00 p.m.
Wed, 1/16 at 7:00 p.m. (Opening Night)
Thu, 1/17 at 7:00 p.m.
Fri, 1/18 at 8:00 p.m. (Directors: In Conversation, 7:00 pm)
Sat, 1/19 at 8:00 p.m.
Sun, 1/20 at 2:00 p.m. (Artists: In Conversation, post-show)
Wed, 1/23 at 2:00 p.m.
Wed, 1/23 at 7:00 p.m.
Thu, 1/24 at 7:00 p.m.
Fri, 1/25 at 8:00 p.m. (Artistic Directors: In Conversation, 7:00 p.m.)
Sat, 1/26 at 8:00 p.m.
Sun, 1/27 at 2:00 p.m.
Wed, 1/31 at 7:00 p.m.
Fri, 2/1 at 8:00 p.m. (Open Captioned)
Sat, 2/2 at 2:00 p.m. (Open Captioned)
Sat, 2/2 at 8:00 p.m.
Sun, 2/3 at 2:00 p.m.

Extended Dates:
Wed, 2/6 at 7:00 p.m.
Thu, 2/7 at 7:00 p.m.
Fri, 2/8 at 8:00 p.m.
Sat, 2/9 at 8:00 p.m.
Sun, 2/10 at 2:00 p.m.

Theater:
Lantern Theater Company
At St. Stephen's Theater
10th & Ludlow Streets
Philadelphia, PA 19107

Prices:
Adults: $20-$38
Seniors: $20-$33
Students: $10-$28
$10 student rush tickets available 10 minutes before curtain with valid ID; cash only
Special discounts are available for seniors and groups of 10 or more.

Tickets:
Phone: (215) 829-0395
Online: www.lanterntheater.org

Cast (in alphabetical order)
Megan Bellwoar as Maureen Folan
Charlie DelMarcelle as Pato Dooley
Sean Lally as Ray Dooley
Mary Martello as Mag Folan

Production Team
Meghan Jones - Production Manager
Dirk Durossette - Scenic Designer
Maggie Baker - Costume Designer
Shon Causer - Lighting Designer
Daniel Perelstein - Sound Designer
J. Alex Cordaro - Fight Director
Marla Burkholder - Dialect Coach
Rebecca Smith - Stage Manager
Leigh Bicicia - Assistant Director