The ship was the Inchinnan, which notably sailed from Ireland to Australia in 1848 and 1850. Among the passengers were orphan girls told they would be able to start promising lives far from the continuing potato famine. The events, evidently organized by Earl Grey — not the Earl Grey after which the tea is named — were supposedly intended to send orphanage workhouse children, usually 14 to 17 years old, to better lives.
The sailings are perhaps a footnote to history, but they weren’t a footnote to the young women who endured the journey to a new land where their plights weren’t guaranteed to bring them beneficial changes. They were more likely a threat to have them resume their work as servants or, just as likely, prostitutes.
Playwright Jaki McCarrick has decided to give this populace belated attention. Her extremely powerful effort is Belfast Girls, which concentrates on five young women sharing an Inchinnan cabin that designer Chika Shimzu has outfitted with two bunkbeds, a table and chair, a closet-like space for valises to be stacked and a short and narrow promenade above.
[Read Elysa Gardner’s ★★★☆☆ review here.]
Strangers when they meet, four of them are awkwardly getting used to each other when a fifth, looking particularly forlorn, arrives. The first four are threatening, Jamaica-background Judith Noone (Caroline Strange), overbearing Hannah Gibney (Mary Mallen), less threatening Ellen Clarke (Labhaoise McGee) and seemingly quiet Sarah Jane Wylie (Sarah Street). The fifth introduces herself as Molly Durcan (Aida Leventaki), who recovers her health quickly enough and over the long’ journey unpacks as many books as clothes. (The wardrobe for all five requires, and designer China Lee supplies, a long-sleeved, long-skirt, blue uniform).
As undoubtedly any group interacts– whether new to each other or long-time acquaintances — there are convivial moments. But this is a play. Conviviality isn’t the order of most days. The five are as much at odds as they are chummy. Play-savvy observers may start thinking about predictabilities, that, for example, at least one lesbian attachment will develop. No more details on that here,
(For the globe-hopping curious: The Inchinnan route seems to head down past England, Portugal, the west African coast and then around the Cape and eastward across the wide Indian Ocean expanse to Australia.)
Play-savvy observers may also begin to wonder about the sustained good weather the Inchinnan encounters. Aside from a sudden lurch, when departing the Belfast wharf — at which a couple of the women decide to wave and others choose not to — it’s smooth sailing, this while McCarrick’s less-than-smooth relationships play out somewhat longer than necessary.
Only when the seas begin to seem unusually calm does McCarrick see to a sea change, or, rather, an ocean change: A storm. (Are storms in dramas always symbolic? Feels that way, doesn’t it?) Only then do certain revelations about the characters tower like crashing waves.
Molly Durcan, who’s talked about her generous (with books) mistress, is the eye of this storm. Her bona fides for the trip come into question. As McCarrick writes it, the bona fides of the other four are also questionable: None of them is likely under age 19, which they’ve all claimed to be in order to board the ship.
Quite a storm this one is, too, which reveals some of the physical production’s pluses and minuses. The biggest plus is sound designer Caroline Eng’s. The crackling and reverberating she unleashes wouldn’t be out of place as King Lear hits the heath. A production minus is that no lighting effects are asked of sound designer Michael O’Connor, who’s otherwise on top of things. Perhaps because the women occupy a windowless space, they’d be unable to see anything. There is, however, the short upper promenade that might be abruptly and again abruptly illuminated.
It’s undoubtedly too much to ask of almost any budget that the cabin in question replicate the shifting balance of the roiling waters. Not that that’s too much of a drawback. Director Nicola Murphy compensates by having the actors repeatedly throw themselves mercilessly about — at least one of them hanging over a bowl to regurgitate.
Their flailing couldn’t be more convincing. (It may even be that audience members empathetically experience the discomfort.) The distress enacted is only one of the ensemble’s above-and-beyond accomplishments. All five beautifully and consistently respond to each other and to the script’s nuances.
At one late moment Sarah Jane Wylie reads a letter from her brother, already in Australia for some time, in which he mentions the drawbacks there. His report, along with a disturbing newspaper clipping, comes as harsh news to the others. Their individual reactions to Sarah Jane’s reading are a marvel of subtle performing.
What’s transpiring is the cruel drowning of dreams, dreams being the lifesavers onto which the women have been clinging. McCarrick, like many playwrights before her — is talking about dreams as the mainstay of troubled lives. At the Belfast Girls end, the women represent anyone anywhere attempting to keep a dream awake, if such a thing can be done. That’s even as the dream appears to be fading.
This is often described as hoping against hope. McCarrick quite impressively presents a poignant version of it.
Belfast Girls opened May 19, 2022, at the Irish Repertory Theatre and runs through June 26. Tickets and information: irishrep.org
