Over the Bridge

Synopsis

"I sometimes compare people with a story my father used to tell me when I was a wee girl. About how they built a boat in the shipyard, how they started from her keel plate and built her up, riveting and welding her plates to a sound structure... And when she was finished, she'd sail down Belfast Lough and into the ocean to be lashed and buffeted by storms. But dad always said that he could be sure of one thing, she'd come through it all in one piece. Isn't it a pity people couldn't be like that?" Set in the Belfast Shipyard of the 1950s and against the backdrop of the IRA's Border Campaign, Sam Thompson's seminal 1960 play is a powerful expose of Ulster's sectarian bigotry and violence before the eruption of the Troubles. Peter O'Boyle, a Catholic shipyard worker, has become the target of a vicious whispering campaign. Veteran Trade Unionist Davy Mitchell, a Protestant who has spent his life fighting for others' right to work, is keen that the Union does what it can to protect him. As tensions mount and the union begins to split on sectarian lines, mob rule starts to take over...

Our Review:

30 April 2013

Belfast shipyards in the 1950s were unruly places. Flourishing under the frenzied scramble for ship construction, Harland and Wolff (the yard most famous for building the Titanic), sets the scene for the latest offering of Irish theatre from the Finborough Theatre: Over the Bridge.

Playwright Sam Thompson wrote this frank account of shipyard life in 1957, sparing none of the gory details about the ongoing - and at times fatal - rift between Catholic and Protestant yardmen working under the same trade union. At this time, poverty was commonplace, unemployment soared, and unions worked hard to give all a fair opportunity to make a living.

This production of Over the Bridge is the first in London for over 50 years, and deserves the airing that it receives at the Finborough. A large cast tackle the nuances of the dialogue well, despite the language being rather dry and information-heavy in the first couple of scenes. After a slow start, however...

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