One of the many perks of attending theater on a regular basis is that you constantly learn more about all manner of subjects and events. Like everyone, I was generally aware of the potato famine that devastated Ireland in the 1840s, but until picking up the program for Irish Repertory Theatre’s new production of Jaki McCarrick’s Belfast Girls, I knew nothing of Earl Grey’s Famine Orphan Scheme, which sent thousands of girls and young women from the country’s overwhelmed workhouses to Australia in search of better lives.
As you might expect, the Scheme was not an entirely utopian enterprise. Australia’s population was too light on females at the time, and many of the lasses sent to its shores were mistreated by employers and by men generally, with some resorting to sex work to sustain themselves. But the majority, the program notes tell us, managed to build new lives, finding jobs and husbands—the latter being, at least in theory, the surest source of security back then.
McCarrick’s play, predictably, is not a happily-ever-after tale. We meet her characters, five women of questionable age and background—those boarding the ships were supposed to be “morally pure” teenagers, but were often older and more, well, experienced—as they’re about to set sail, and leave them as they arrive in Sydney. What we learn in between—of their back stories, their aspirations and the worlds they are departing and entering—gives us cause for both hope and dread.
[Read David Finkle’s ★★★★☆ review here.]
The hope stems mostly from the sheer pluck of these emigrants, played by appealing young actors under Nicola Murphy’s sprightly direction. Judith, a Jamaican-born woman of mixed race, quickly emerges as the no-nonsense leader, with Caroline Strange giving her both a steel spine and palpable warmth. Mary Mallen’s Hannah and Labhaoise Magee’s Ellen are more hot-blooded and impulsive, sparring with each other from the moment both cast eyes on the ship’s handsome cook.
Sarah Street’s Sarah is relatively gentle and pliant, at least on the surface; like other characters, she has been driven by all she has endured to keep secrets, even from her bunkmates. But the most elusive member of this ragtag group is Molly, a delicate maiden—perfectly played by a demure Aida Leventaki—who shows up late with a story about having worked as a maid, then turns out to be an avid student of Karl Marx and budding women’s rights movements.
The relationships that evolve between these women are fairly unsurprising in the end—including one that would have been deemed subversive at the time, but now seems almost obligatory in the context of a contemporary play looking at young women under these circumstances. Still, McCarrick’s dialogue is crisp and absorbing, and Murphy and her design team—notably Caroline Eng, whose sound evokes storms that mirror the emotional turbulence at play here—keep the action brisk and credible.
“It was like bein’ outta the world,” one character says towards the end, reflecting on the journey. “Outta the streets an’ all the man-made rules…For a wee while there, maybe, we were free.” Even if Belfast Girls doesn’t leave you similarly moved, you’ll root heartily for its fictional dreamers, and for their countless real-life successors.
Belfast Girls opened May 19, 2022, at the Irish Repertory Theatre and runs through June 26. Tickets and information: irishrep.org
