Review: Republic of Silence, Riverside Studios ★★★½

Republic of Silence, written and directed by Kaci Kerwick and produced with Fiona Lynch, arrives at Riverside Studios’ Bitesize Festival after a run at Theatre Peckham. PÓG Productions have taken on one of the most painful chapters in recent Irish history, the mother and baby institutions, using Sean Ross Abbey in Tipperary as their setting.

The play moves between two timelines. In 1965, two young pregnant women, Niamh (Eanna Ferguson) and Aisling (Áine McNamara), live inside the Abbey and hear whispers of stolen babies, missing girls and violence, building to the point where they rage against the institution that holds them. In 2021, the discovery of bones on the site sets off a reckoning, personal and national, for Colm (Oisín Nolan), the man who uncovers them, while local politician Seán (Jack O’Shaughnessy) would rather the whole thing went away quietly.

I was glad to find there was a sense of the passage of time here rather than the story being compressed into a single moment of discovery. Colm pushes for a proper investigation while Seán resists, and I read Colm as perhaps a composite figure, someone with his own roots at Sean Ross rather than a single named campaigner, which felt like a reasonable way into difficult material. Seán, on the other hand, represents all those in many jurisdictions in many countries, for whom brushing things under the carpet in the name of ambition feels only too reasonable.

The discussion of the mortal remains themselves is handled with care. Colm sees the buried babies as souls, at a point when others around him have never believed the children of fallen women deserved the same value as any other child. He wants to give them dignity.

Of the two timelines, I found the two earlier pregnant teenagers particularly well explored. Niamh is fiercely vulnerable as she allows herself to hope, but also cynical and protective as she takes Aisling under her wing. Aisling begins as a vulnerable ingenue who barely understands the institution she has entered, which makes the final scene, where she – left in the laundry – echoes Niamh’s own words of welcome and explanation, devastating. There is real inevitability in that moment, and a new understanding for her and the audience.

Seán is suitably smooth and ambitious in his desire to bury the story, he becomes more bullying and reckless though his objections did start to become a little repetitive. There is a small immersive touch too, with a moment when he comes among the audience shaking hands and trying to get them on his side. Colm, by contrast, is calm and measured, the voice of decency, railing against the idea that a thousand souls could be hidden, and becoming braver than he ever anticipated needing to be.

All four performers were utterly believable in their characters and in this place, though at times all the roles existed a little too obviously in service of the play’s message rather than as fully rounded people in their own right. Nuance is introduced through Niamh, who can see that the nuns are trying their best and believe they are helping “fallen women” that no one else wants to help. The townspeople’s turning away underlines a harder truth: that the nuns really were the only place of respite on offer for some, even a cruel and unfeeling one, and it is entirely possible they truly believed that placing the babies in childless homes was the most Christian kindness they could offer.

Though the production’s handling of the Church’s role had texture rather than reaching for a broad villain, the institution’s cruelty is shown plainly rather than softened, women and children maimed and starved within the Abbey walls, and at one point Colm reads out a list of names, the infants who died of malnourishment. It is a simple device, and a heart-breaking one.

The set design does a great deal on a small budget. A simple washing line and hanging white clothes has a strong impact, doubling as laundry and framing device, with the audience arriving and leaving to Irish songs that helped ready us for Seán and the small town sensibilities he represents. Lighting was evocative throughout, and the sound design, particularly the baby’s cries and mothers’ screams, was effective without tipping into spectacle. Hi vis vests appeared briefly at the start to signal the modern day scenes, with muted uniforms in the past keeping the two timelines distinct and the womens’ position clear.

The transitions between 1965 and 2021 worked well, with all four performers often on stage together while keeping the shift between timelines always clear. Tension does not build in a chronological sense. Instead it works more as a gradual exposing of the story. Where the production struggled more was pacing: it could be somewhat didactic in both timelines, relying rather too much on exposition.

This is an admirable look at the history of mother and baby homes in Ireland and a worthy attempt to provide depth and nuance, performed with empathy, strong research and a top flight cast.

1931. Sean Ross Abbey opens as a mother and baby home in Tipperary. It will operate until 1969.
1950s. Philomena Lee’s son is taken from Sean Ross for adoption in the United States, one case within a wider, officially tolerated pipeline of Irish born children sent abroad. (her story was told in the Oscar-nominated 2013 film Philomena starring Judi Dench)
1965. The year in which the play’s earlier timeline is set, within the home’s final years of operation
1969. Sean Ross Abbey closes.
2019. Ground scan investigations begin at the site.
2021. The Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes publishes its final report. Chapter 19, covering Sean Ross specifically, confirms between 1,078 and 1,090 recorded infant deaths.
2023 to 2024. Renewed survey work at the Angels’ Plot finds anomalies, and in one excavated section, the remains of 42 infants.

Tickets are £8, or £50 for fifty shows across the Bitesize Festival.

Republic of Silence plays at Riverside Studios as part of the Bitesize Festival on 6 August (8:45pm), 7 August (3:15pm & 8:45pm), 8 August (9pm) and 9 August (2:30pm).

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