ALAN McGUIRE welcomes a biography of the French semiologist and philosopher
A brilliantly tense play
A compelling story of how cruelty begets cruelty, and of how the child becomes the parent, writes PETER MASON
Orla Fitzgerald as Maureen and Adam Best as Pato
[Helen Maybanks] 
ALEX HALL is frustrated by a book that ducks a clear definition of terrorism and fails to perceive the role of the state in sponsoring it
JOE GILL wholeheartedly recommends an eloquent manifesto: how to change the world one local project at a time
Inspired by a photograph, a unique memorial in Michigan immortalises US true labour heroes. MICHAL BONCZA recalls a great story rarely told
MARIA DUARTE, LEO BOIX and ANGUS REID review Brides, Dead of Winter, A Night Like This, and The Librarians
MARIA DUARTE is entertained by a wry portrait of befuddled resistance to US authoritarianism
Beauty Queen of Leenane
Lyric Hammersmith, London
SET in the west of Ireland and first staged in 1996, Martin McDonagh’s Beauty Queen of Leenane centres around 40-year-old Maureen, angry and depressed at having to look after her manipulative, ailing mother as the rain falls ceaselessly outside their run-down home in Connemara.
Momentarily Maureen’s drab isolation is relieved as she stumbles into a night of awkward romance with neighbour Pato, who has returned briefly from a labouring job in England.
But when her selfish mother contrives to put the kybosh on their putative relationship, there are bitter consequences all round.
More from this author
PETER MASON relishes a legend of Jamaican roots reggae still plying his trade with a large degree of spirit
PETER MASON is wowed (and a little baffled) by the undeniably ballet-like grace of flamenco
PETER MASON is surprised by the bleak outlook foreseen for cricket’s future by the cricketers’ bible
PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river
