THE WASP • Albion Theatre

Olivier Award-winning playwright and screenwriter Morgan Lloyd Malcolm’s thriller was first performed in 2015 at the Hampstead Theatre Downstairs in London, and now it’s receiving a gripping St. Louis premiere courtesy of Albion Theatre.

It begins with a get-together between Carla (Macia Noorman), very pregnant and smoking liberally, and Heather (Ricki Franklin), smartly dressed and amiable. Heather has asked to meet up with Carla after not having seen her in 20 years since they were mates in school. Their friendship turned sour as they got older, and Carla can’t imagine why Heather would want to reunite after all these years, especially considering that Carla’s bullying made Heather’s life a misery back in the day. After a bit of awkward conversation, Heather produces a bag full of cash and an unexpected proposition that will change them both.

These two women have led very dissimilar lives in the intervening years since primary school. Carla is struggling financially with four kids and a fifth on the way, and a partner who gambles away what little money they have. Heather is financially secure, childless, and her husband is neglectful and unfaithful, seeming to flit from one obsession to the next. His current fixation is with the wasp of the title, in this case, the tarantula hawk. This spider wasp preys on tarantulas, paralyzes them with their sting, and lays eggs in the host, ensuring a creeping certainty of death. Predatory nature indeed looms large in the play, along with the cyclical nature and lingering effects of childhood trauma and bullying. There’s also differences in social class, mirrored down to the differences in the characters’ very well executed dialects.

THE BEAUTY QUEEN OF LEENANE • Albion Theatre

The hail and strong winds that moved through St. Louis Friday night were no match for the storm brewing on the Kranzberg stage in Albion Theatre’s terrific production of The Beauty Queen of Leenane. In the first of playwright Martin McDonagh’s, “The Leenane Trilogy”, The Beauty Queen’s premise sounds pretty ordinary; 40-year-old Maureen is trapped as primary caregiver to her ailing mother Mag, when chance brings Pato, an old acquaintance of Maureen’s into the fray, posing as a beacon of hope for Maureen and an existential threat to Mag. But McDonagh doesn’t really do ordinary. Maureen, Mag, and much of the town it seems, are mired in the isolation of the rugged countryside village of Leenane in County Galway, Ireland, nursing long-held grudges. Playing out in the Folan family’s claustrophobic kitchen (provided by Chuck Winning’s nicely appointed set and Majorie Williamson’s set painting), the bleak state of affairs that McDonagh’s characters are stuck in unfold with reversals that seem inevitable, but still unsettle and disarm you with gasp-inducing jolts alongside surprising fragments of warmth. Martin McDonagh typically doesn’t waste time on lengthy exposition, so I'll try not to go into too much detail here. The less you know, the better. But all in all, it’s really kind of fucked up, but in the best, most captivating way possible.