Bold Girls at
Urban Stages

ona Munro’s award winning drama, Bold Girls, starts ominously, with a
young girl in a tattered white dress with a rhinestone speckled bodice
speaking gibberish in a Belfast accent thick as the barbed wire festooned on
the neighborhood walls. Before we can wonder who the girl is, the scene
changes to Marie Donnelly’s bright but careworn kitchen. She tosses a bag of
potato chips to her unseen son while she reminds him about tea, fusses around
her kitchen, entertains her friends Nora, who pops over with her hair in
curlers, and Nora’s flashy daughter Cassie. Marie is a widow whose husband
Michael was blown away over three years before during yet another spasm of
Ulster’s sectarian violence, and she’s spent the time since then idealizing
him. The other two women have had husbands and sons “lifted,” or arrested by
the Brits or their RUC henchman. Munro’s particular skill in Bold Girls is to
show how life goes on, even in a place like Ulster, where the sound of
gunfire is commonplace, where a roadblock might mean the difference between a
night sitting at home or going to the local pub, where one is not free of
being searched even when one is trying to relax at same pub, how Belfast
“isn’t any different from anywhere else,” except when it’s not. Suddenly,
during a thunderstorm, the young girl, whose name is Deirdre, rushes into
Marie’s house for shelter. This event, more than the gunfire outside or the
constant rousting by the Brits, changes the lives of the three women, at
least for that long night. Deirdre, a nearly feral sixteen year old, hasn’t
chosen the Donnelly house at random. She’s in search of answers, and feels
that only Marie can give them to her.

  Munro also succeeds in showing her characters as modern women and not
stalwart but perpetually lamenting Juno Boyle types. They are determined to
not just make do but have a good time, and even memories of their men being
rounded up have the power to make them laugh. Of course, they’re not as
modern as they’d like to be. The play is set in 1991, a few years before
Ireland was transformed from the sow who eats her own farrow into the Celtic
tiger. Cassie flirts, runs around in mini-skirts and is going nuts from the
frustration of living in a dump like Belfast; she warns Marie that she may
one day quit the town altogether, even if it means leaving her children. But
she also condemns herself as a “bold girl,” one who rebels against the rules
laid down by Irish society via mothers like Nora, who burden their daughters
with guilt, self-denial and housework while they treat their sons like young
pashas. The quiet and compassionate Marie plays around the edges of boldness
-- seems she’s bought herself a pair of risque panties -- while Nora, though
allowing herself to accompany the younger women to the pub for a drink,
believes in the old verities, though they get her nowhere. Her late husband
not only regularly slugged her but she seems to be a favorite punching bag of
the British soldiers as well. She learned, and has learned, to endure both
factions. The men in Bold Girls are kept firmly offstage, which is just as
well, as all of them are lying dogs; they may be friendly dogs, like Marie’s
Michael, or mean, ugly dogs like Cassie’s incarcerated husband, but dogs they
are. Nevertheless, Munro makes one realize that dogdom is what happens when
men are denied their manhood through relentless oppression.

  Marian Tomas Griffin, with her firm jaw and head of springy red hair,
makes a sturdy and likable Marie. Even when her ideals are shattered one has
the feeling that her sympathetic heart won’t allow her to be bitter for too
long. Jordan Simmons’ Cassie is beautiful and hilarious, but her own
bitterness is such that she risks her friendship with Marie just to spread
some of it around. Denise Lute makes Nora a funny, comfortable, middle-aged
housewife whose most fraught stage of motherhood is behind her, though not
forgotten by her daughter. Sasha Eden, who also co-produced the play, is
creepy as the angry and nearly half-witted Deirdre; when Marie finally
embraces her at the end the audience is still uneasy. Bold Girls was directed
by Hayley Finn and though the play was delayed a while because of a wonky
lighting system the night the reviewer saw it, the lighting design by Steve
Brady worked well, especially during the soliloquies and moments of
heightened emotion. Set designer Debbie Buelow and prop master Chris Skeems
designed a very familiar working class kitchen, and the writer must also give
an appreciative nod to Dialect coach Doug Honorof/Verberations for the
women’s Belfast Catholic accents.

  Bold Girls was presented by Women’s Expressive Theater Inc., (WET) one of
whose founders is, astonishingly, Ms. Eden -- astonishing because she really
doesn’t look more than sixteen. The play will run at Urban Stages, 259 West
30th Street, through April 21st.

Best,

Arlene

you may contact Arlene at: amckanic@aol.com