The birth of the Irish nation — a view from the maternity ward

The Pull of the Stars Gate Theatre, Dublin until May 12

We often refer to the revolutionary period in Ireland as “the birth of the nation”, but in all the foundational narratives there is rarely much about childbirth. This fascinating show gets up to its elbows, literally, in the messy process of bringing forth new life, as wars happen, pandemics rage, and tiny babies relentlessly continue their march down the birth canal towards life. Emma Donoghue’s new play, adapted from her 2020 novel, is set in a Dublin maternity ward in 1918, quarantined for Spanish flu. The people are characters who have strayed in from Seán O’Casey terrain. It is a paean to the world of women in the shadowy years after the 1916 Rising and before the War of Independence. It is also a love letter to nurses and nursing. The play centres on Julia Power, a nurse left alone to manage the understaffed flu-ridden ward. A younger woman, Bridie Sweeney (Ghaliah Conroy), brings in a delirious Magdalene inmate, and immediately gets put in an apron (Joan O’Clery’s fine evocative costumes) and co-opted as a nurse’s assistant. In the intense furnace of birth and death that the ward becomes, Julia falls in love with Bridie. A great strength of the show is its attention to the minutiae of the birth experience. Three women give birth to tiny and very believable little puppet babies, with various outcomes. Director Louise Lowe embraces the chaos of the maternity ward and cajoles it into a whirlwind of action and tension. The sheer intimacy is powerful; both awful and awesome. On the negative side, the play never fully sheds its baggy novel origins. We get set-pieces on episiotomy processes, the Magdalene laundries, the plight of orphans, the shell-shocked men returning from Gallipoli. Vast ground is covered and it’s the kind of narrative approach that works better in the more meditative form of the novel. All the performances are outstanding. Maeve Fitzgerald has a natural Edwardian feel as Dr Kathleen Lynn, nationalist, doctor and all-out hero. Ciara Byrne as the young pregnant Mary Tierney is a funny, winning waif. And Sarah Morris gives Julia Power stubborn authority and charm as the centre of the show. This is a powerful side-room version of Ireland’s foundation story: compelling, rewarding and eye-opening. It’s the battle for the GPO, but with birthing stirrups.