One of the most harrowing crimes against women waged by the Catholic Church in Ireland is the painful subject of Patricia Bourke Brogan's Eclipsed. The play is based upon the factual existence of the Magdalene Laundries operated for "penitents" well into the 1970s, according to director Rebecca Luttrell Briley's program note. Young women who bore children out of wedlock or were sometimes their orphaned offspring were kept under lock and key at a convent workhouse in Killmacha, Ireland, to wash, iron, and mend the clergy's clothing, bedding, and linens. Their children were taken from them, and the men -- sometimes priests -- who got them pregnant and abandoned them were held blameless since "men are like that." Joni Mitchell's haunting song called "The Magdalene Laundries," heard toward the end of the play, movingly encapsulates, as does Briley's impassioned work, the horror experienced by young Catholic women who fell victim to their church's uncomprehending cruelty.
For its third annual celebration of Women's History Month the Pleiades Theater Company, which focuses on women's issues in a context respectful of diversity, joined with the new Sheelanagig Kentucky Irish Theater group to present Eclipsed. The play's title bluntly defines the lives in the dark that inmates led; at times they hold up mirrors to catch sunlight that manages to pass through bars on their laundry-room window. Seamless ensemble work is a hallmark of this production. That said, note must be taken of the strong impact made by Sarah Peters as Brigit Murphy, the most rebellious victim; Kelly Rose as the conflicted Sister Virginia; Natalie Long as the one most docile about her confinement; Jessica May as an Elvis Presley worshipper who fantasizes a love affair with him; Heather Benjamin as asthmatic Cathy who yearns to see the twins she produced, and Liz Vissing as the hard-hearted, unyielding Mother Victoria, who blindly carries out church doctrine and abjures compassion.
