Bold Girls – facing up to the unpalatable whole truth and choosing how to move on (Centre Stage at the Lyric Theatre until Sunday 14 June)

Bold Girls is located somewhere in and around the Falls Road/Anderstown Road in west Belfast in the late 1980s. Cassie lives with her mum Nora and kids across the road from Marie. These women are rich in ambition, poor in pocket, and they’ve been hiding secrets from each other and possibly from themselves. Phil Jennings’ simple maroon-themed kitchen set floats above the Lyric’s Naughton Studio stage, a dias for teal-spilling and dealing with the past.

An early question “Do you believe in ghosts?” sets up the non-supernatural appearance of Deirdre (Annie McIlwaine), never not dress in white, who lurks in the vicinity of Marie and Nora wherever they go.

Director Michael Quinn freezes the action – aided by Jennings’ sharp spotlighting – as characters deliver thoughtful monologues to the audience. An episode of ITV’s Blind Date plays in the corner, emphasising the neighbours’ vacuum of romantic relationships and their lust for love.

Rona Munro’s dialogue excels at allowing the lively women to speak at cross-purposes, with three people often conducting two different conversations in beautiful harmony. An unseen washing machine is an early source of humour. But this play is no comedic sitcom.

Caroline Curran sports a brunette wig and plays Marie with warmth and wit: a feeder who welcomes even the stranger into her kitchen and can knock up a sandwich in the middle of the night. (The rest of the cast had better like Curran’s sandwiches as there’s a lot of eating on two show days!)

The first act sets Marie up as a cheerful single mother who idolises her dead husband. Bold Girls asks whether any of these women can make their own decisions and escape the orbit of their men folk, who are either dead or incarcerated, and remain absent from the stage. Can they truly run away from their past and other people’s past actions?

Marie’s steady attitude is knocked in the aftermath of a trip to the local nightclub when her more sporty neighbour Cassie (played with engaging vigour by Hannah Carnegie) opens up and shares a succession of pieces of distressing news. Throughout, dream-stealing Deirdre loiters with unsure intent.

Anger bleeds into Curran’s happy-go-lucky portrayal of Marie as the young mother pushes back on other people’s legacy. Meanwhile Cassie’s mum (played by Mairead McKinley) is waking up to the fact that other people are denying her nice things. The most powerful scene comes when the women – all of whom should know better – take the side of heinous men against their kith and kin.

The characters are well drawn, the laughs keep rolling, and 36 years after its première, Rona Munro’s script still has much to say about this conflicted society where can women be left to suffer the cost of their partners’ actions. It’s a simpler yet at least as effective companion piece to the Lyric’s recent production of Tea in a China Cup.

Centre Stage’s revival of Bold Girls finishes its sold out run at the Lyric Theatre on Sunday 14 June. 

Photo credit: Rebecca Jane Windsor 

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