Our Lady of the Goldfinches (Tour - Salford)

Born Protestant Jean McConville converted to Catholicism after marriage and as a result suffered harassment during the conflict in Northern Ireland .Her large family was intimidated out of a Protestant district and Jean was later abducted and killed by the IRA claiming that she was an informant for the British security forces.
 
The IRA never provided any proof to back-up their claim and Jean’s murderers have not been brought to justice. Faced with a situation in which the truth is unlikely to emerge director Bill Hopkinson uses McConville’s life and death to illustrate the effect of unexplained loss on a family and the impossibility of trying to live a normal life during constant conflict and fear.

Hopkinson sets a disjointed atmosphere to convey the shattered lives of the McConville family. Constantly shifting chilly blue patterned filmed images by Laura Haughey and Andy Duggan are projected over the cast. This approach works well in the main but there are occasional slips – a red wash without associated sound effects does not convey the terror of a conflagration.
 
Writer Jane McNulty’s script is multi-layered and dense. Statistics on people who ‘disappeared’ are juxtaposed with the official statements from the IRA. Horrifying details are given – after her murder the IRA returned Jean’s purse because they didn’t want to be perceived as thieves. Throughout the play the desperate efforts of Jean’s daughter Helen (powerfully played by Rachel Priest) reminds us of the human cost of the conflict. The play is crammed with imaginative techniques such as over-lapping dialogue and Duggan’s driving music score played live.
 
At times, however, the play feels over-egged. It reaches an emotional peak before its climax when the justification put forward by the IRA is offset by the blasé response of the British authorities and Helen’s desperate entreaties. But the scene is nudged towards cacophony when Sarah Niven, as the spirit of Ireland, starts singing folk songs in the background. A scene in the afterlife in which Jeans scolds an IRA representative and a British soldier has a wish-fulfilment feel that is out of place with the downbeat mood of the play.
 
The stylised approach makes clear that in such an extreme situation it is almost impossible to behave decently and apparently trivial acts (such as a row with a neighbour) can have fatal consequences. A more naturalist approach might have generated greater sympathy for the subject. Bairbre Ni hAodha’s feisty performance gives Jean an indomitable spirit that shows the loss was not limited to her family.

A more naturalistic approach acknowledging that, at the time of her murder, Jean was depressed and suicidal might have had even more power reminding us that bullies with guns wiped out a helpless human being, rather than a symbol.

- Dave Cunningham