Extraordinary Eclipsed gets new staging

Mephisto Theatre Company’s production of Patricia Burke Brogan’s award-winning play, Eclipsed will be staged at the Town Hall Theatre from August 21 to 31.

This is the play that did so much to shine a light on Ireland’s shameful Madgalen laundries, when it was first staged in 1992 by the city’s Punchbag Theatre. It went on to win a Fringe First award in Edinburgh and was subsequently revived in 1998, for a production at the Town Hall Theatre.

It tells the story of eight women, whose lives converge at the Magdalen Laundry at Killmacha.

There is Sr Virginia, who struggles to obey under the forbidding eye of Mother Victoria, who watches everyone and controls this strange universe. The women who are trapped here have their own stories and their own sorrows. Cathy keeps trying and failing to escape to be with her children, who are close by in the orphanage. Older inmate Nellie-Nora reads tea leaves and resigns herself to remaining inside, while young Mandy dreams of marrying Elvis and tragic Brigit fights like a tigress to find her baby.

Thirty years later that baby, Rosa traces her mother to the laundry. It is long since closed and dusty, but the wounds are still raw, the humour is still dark, the women’s spirits are still fighting.

The production is directed by Niall Cleary and the cast includes Teresa Brennan, Catherine Denning, Siobhán Donnellan, Caroline Lynch, Zita Monahan, Emma O’Grady, Margaret O’Sullivan and Liz Quinn.

Eclipsed will preview next Wednesday, August 21 and will open on Thursday, August 22 and run until Saturday, August 31 running at 8pm nightly.