Iron

by munro-rona

Fay is fifteen years into a life sentence for murdering her husband. Her now grown-up daughter, Josie visits her for the first time, and the two women begin to close the gap between them, with Fay helping Josie to remember her life before Fay was sent down. But a thoughtless attempt by Josie to smuggle in some tranquilizers results in a three-month ban on visits, threatening to destroy the fragile reconciliation.

Genres: Plays, Drama

96 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2008

Reviews

[notgettingenough · Rating 4 out of 5]

I saw this with a friend who thought the basic premise - that a girl about ten years old, I think - could watch one of her parents murder the other and then block it out. I imagine the world is full of examples and I can readily believe it looking back on my own childhood. When I was about that age, I'm told I watched my father in an unbalanced mentally ill frenzy tear all the books from a bookshelf, drag it through the house and out the back door, manically hack it to pieces with an ax and then set it on fire. You can block anything out, the worse it is, the easier, I expect, having absolutely no recollection of this terrifying event whatsoever.

One thing stands out for me as to the strength of this play: Redstitch has always suffered for want of female actors as good as its males, but this play stood up to this.

[Daisy Leather · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very tense, claustrophobic play centred around the relationship between Fay, a woman who murdered her husband, and Josie, her daughter who is visiting for the first time in 15 years. It delves into her lost memories, bringing up bit by bit, and the audience making assumptions alongside her as to the motives behind what her mother did.

I found it hard to fathom exactly who Fay was, and I think that is part of the message of the play - we sympathise with her, we see her in distress, but also are unsure about the circumstances involved and how exactly we should judge her for the crime she committed.

The other interesting dynamic was how Fay is so determined to live vicariously through her daughter, giving her instructions how to live her life on the outside and then asking her to describe it in detail during each visit. We see Josie's life constrict whilst Fay's life expands through the interactions, shown in one of my favourite quotes - 'all I've got now is your life. You're squashing your life down till its no bigger than my cell.'

Ominous and intriguing, the ending is also quite ambiguous - guard 2 let's her take the rock, and we know exactly what Fay said about rocks earlier on in the play... so what exactly is it that she intends to do? We can only continue to speculate, as we have been doing throughout the entire play.

A really interesting play.

[Phillip · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is my least favorite Rona Munro play that I've read. It's not bad, but it's just not the kind of play I'm really drawn to.

This is a prison play and a psychological/family drama about a woman (Fay) who is in prison for life after murdering her husband, and he daughter Josie begins visiting after fifteen years of not having contact with her mother. They begin building a relationship, but there are also suggestions that Fay is manipulating Josie for her own ends--whether that's just to get contraband smuggled in or for some deeper psychological purpose. But when Josie begins to give up her own life to pursue trying to get Fay out of prison, Fay rejects her daughter.

I think ultimately the guiding principle of this play is Fay's line: "There's no-one can hurt you like the one you love, is there?"
https://youtu.be/24TNJ_h8lfg

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5/5 stars

[Amy Benson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The monologue about rage is cool.
"I was just sitting, just sitting in my chair like a coal burning in the fire, so full of anger I couldn't move." etc