The 4th Country
Park Theatre


 

THE group behind this little gem of a production, Plain Heroines, are a female-led company whose mission statement is to make funny plays about difficult subjects and this production does exactly that.

Set in Northern Ireland, the play explores how the tragedies of their recent history, still haunting the present, can be dramatised honestly and effectively and specifically how a play can do justice to the Bloody Sunday victims and their relatives and those who suffered under Northern Ireland’s rigidly cruel abortion laws.

The writer and actress Kate Reid has structured the piece around four interconnected lives and the actors who are trying to play those parts. Stylistically, she uses a light touch and metatheatre to spotlight historic grievances. Out-of-role discussions on alternate structures and approaches to the drama punctuate a largely naturalistic narrative of a family struggling to escape the shadows of the past.