Writer: Tracy Ryan
Director: Kirsty Patrick Ward
While the UK gets ready for another season of strikes, it seems the perfect time to revisit one of the longest periods of industrial action ever recorded in Europe and, outside Ireland, it’s a surprisingly unfamiliar tale. Tracy Ryan’s feel-good play about the Dunnes Store Strike is impossible to resist.
It’s 1984 and workers in Dunnes Store on Dublin’s Henry Street have been instructed by their union to not sell any goods that come from South Africa. If a customer comes to the till wanting to buy, say, a grapefruit they should politely refuse. However, when Mary follows her union’s guidance, she finds herself suspended. In solidarity, 11 of her co-workers walk out of the door with her.
Their union rep tells them that the bosses in the shop will soon come to their senses and that the strike will be over in two weeks. The workers surmise that they can survive on the weekly strike pay of £21 for this short period and the weather is warm. It doesn’t seem such a hardship to stand on a picket line during the summer.
Initially, the strikers know little about South Africa. Their beef is with their boss rather than the injustice of apartheid. But as the weeks turn into months and as the sunshine turns to rain, the 12 workers become politically aware. Soon their protest gets the attention of Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu. It’s an incredible story, full of twists and turns.
Ryan has stayed close to real life events which means that there are a lot of people on Southwark Playhouse’s smallish stage. While this allows for a lively production, noisy, funny and bright, it does mean that the characters are thinly sketched. The 11 women and one man are all portrayed as plucky, working-class people with hearts of gold. There are attempts to flesh out a few of these characters – Liz is the new girl, Tommy is in a band, Vonnie is struggling to pay her mortgage – but, overall, they are in danger of blending into one single representation of a brave, determined striker.
Of course, there’s nothing particularly wrong about these broad strokes, especially in a play that shows what a community can do if it comes together to fight a common cause. Director Kirsty Patrick Ward incorporates movement into the play where the workers move as one, whether they are pretending to be formidable Irish mothers or attending political rallies. Like the strikers themselves, this show is very much an ensemble piece.
Paul Carroll has lots of fun playing both the shop’s manager Paul and the union rep Brendan. With just a ruffle of the hair, he switches between the two roles, bringing a sense of sitcom humour to both, Doireann May White is Vonnie, the most serious of the strikers while Anne O’Riordan is Liz, the new employee who grows in stature as the strike continues. The two do well to give the story some focus. Mensah Bediako plays Nimrod Sejake, a black anti-apartheid activist living in exile in Ireland. He befriends the strikers and helps them understand in clearer terms the situation back in South Africa, but this role, too, is hastily drawn and there is little sense of the man behind the serious and gentle façade.
But despite these faults, Strike! is still a joy, and it has much in common with the film Pride, which charted the unlikely partnership between the miners and a gay and lesbian support group in 1980s Britain. There is something very filmic in Ward’s direction and Ryan’s very short scenes. The 100 minutes rush by, and you can’t help but be moved by a story where ordinary people change the course of history.
Runs to 6 May 2023
The Reviews Hub Score
Striking!
