Stunning play opens Fuengirola theatre season with McDonagh’s dark classic

The Salón Varietés Theatre in Fuengirola comes back from its summer break this weekend with a visitor from Ireland and one of the most gripping plays of the last 30 years.

The Portumna Players return to the Costa del Sol with Martin McDonagh’s The Beauty Queen of Leenane, directed by Marian Frawley. There are only two performances: Friday 4 and Saturday 5 September, both at 7.30pm.

McDonagh, the British-Irish writer behind In Bruges, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and The Banshees of Inisherin, first made his name in the theatre. The Beauty Queen of Leenane premiered in Galway in 1996, transferred to London and Broadway, and won four Tony Awards. It is a black comedy that turns, without warning, into something much darker.

The story is set in a rain-soaked cottage in Leenane, Connemara, in the early 1990s. Forty-year-old Maureen Folan has spent years caring for her demanding mother, Mag. A rare chance of love appears when neighbour Pato Dooley takes an interest in her. Mag has other ideas. What follows is a study of entrapment, missed opportunity, manipulation and revenge, building towards a single moment that changes everything.

Frawley’s production stars Jason Tuohy, Mary Lynch, Mai Ryan and Donal Coffey. The Portumna Players last appeared at the Salón in 2024; this short visit is the first date of the theatre’s new September-to-May season.

The Salón Varietés, Fuengirola’s English-speaking theatre since 1985, is a 1925 building just off the church square. It usually opens with musicals and concerts; opening with a visiting Irish drama is a sharp way to mark the return from the heat of June, July and August.

Tickets are selling for the two-night run. It is not a light evening, but it is the kind of night the little Fuengirola house does well: close, tense, and hard to shake off on the walk home.

Tickets and information

The Beauty Queen of Leenane

Friday 4 and Saturday 5 September 2026, 7.30pm

Tickets: €20

Book online: salonvarietestheatre.com

Box office: (+34) 952 47 45 42

Open Monday–Friday 11.00 – 14.30, and one hour before each performance

Email: boxoffice@salonvarietestheatre.com

Calle Emancipación, 29640 Fuengirola

The theatre is wheelchair accessible. Wheelchair tickets are available from the box office only.