May ya be half an hour in heaven before the devil knows you’re dead. May ya be half an hour into this Martin McDonagh dark drama before you know what you’ve gotten yourself into. Maryland Ensemble Theatre picks up its 2025/2026 season with the deliciously dark work of McDonagh, to whom they are no strangers, this time with The Beauty Queen of Leenane, directed by Elizabeth van den Berg. Perception is a tricky thing,
Ireland mustn’t be such a bad place if Colonial Players is willing to do a production that’s set there. Kicking off their 68th season with Martin McDonagh’s dark comedy The Cripple of Inishmaan, Colonial Players of Annapolis invites theatergoers into the world of a small island off the west coast of Ireland in 1934. Directed by Dave Carter, this moving piece of darkly humored theatre is quite the engagement, oh aye.
We are not animals. We are watching. But what if we are animals and are not to be trusted? Forum Theatre brings to the stage in a fully immersive and unapologetically evocative experience Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman. Directed by Yury Urnov, this deceptively dark drama and majestically macabre tale unfolds in a surreal reality that is simultaneously in the audience’s periphery and just outside of their vision. Remarkably experiential, as the audience is quite literally the on-looking totalitarian dictatorship masses,
Aye, if ye be in the mood for a poitìn bit o’ good theatre, ‘specially the dark and funny like— now mind you, not the haha out loud sort o’ funny, but the ‘oh…’ sort o’ funny— then The Spotlighters is the place to be goin’. Though bundle up, ye’ll be needin’ th’ heat once ya’ get there. Despite several setbacks, the Martin McDonagh black comedy The Beauty Queen of Leenane carries on upon the stage-in-the-square with a vigorous shake that’ll light a fire in your belly.