Carol Moore Films

Impressive Women - News Letter May 1984

"An all women theatre company probably made history in Belfst last night, if only by having the queues stretching from the Arts Theatre the length of Botanic Avenue clamouring for admission. The play they were waiting to see is a new work, Lay Up Your Ends scripted by five actressess of the new Charabanc Theatre Company with the help of Belfast playwright Martin Lynch.

It owes its authenticity to a brilliant research job the the Belfast of 1911 based on the mill girls strike. To paraphrase an old theatrical expression "All Belfast life of the day is here - the Alhambra Music Hall at Custom House steps on a Sunday night, the wee bit of brass and the scrubbed steps of the terrace house, the drudgery, the long slave wase hours of the workers and above all the horrendous atmosphere of the Satanic Mills that made this city a great industrial power but a slum for most of its inhabitants.

It is a chronicle, perhaps more than a drama, but as vividly alive a chronicle as anything Hollingshead ever produced for Shakespeare to base his plays on and it has the reality of our own history. The performances from Sarah Jones, Carol Scanlan (Moore), Eleanor Methven, Maureen McAuley and Brenda Winter are just stunning....it may prove to be one of the worthiest theatrical ideas of the decade."

Four Plays By Charabanc Theatre Company:
Reinventing Woman's Work
Selected, edited and Introduced by Claudia Harris
ISBN 0-86140-438-6

Linen Hall Library Theatre & Performing Arts Archive (Belfast)
www.theatreni.com

Charabanc Posters and Programmes are available:
http://www.wiisonline.org/resources.php?type=charabanc.

American Conference for Irish Studies:
http://www.acisweb.com/index.php

International Association for Study of Irish Literature:
http://www.iasil.org/