"Never sit on a boy's lap unless there is the thickness of a telephone directory between you."
Caroline Burns Cooke has written and performs a funny, life affirming piece that bristles with humanity.
It starts with a prayer and ends with that same prayer, underlining the journey, before the final coda squeezes the heart.
And The Rope ...' is dark, enthralling, and unremittingly entertaining; a one woman show inspired by 1984's Kerry Babies scandal, when an Irish mother was accused of killing her two children. Despite the injustices portrayed it is non-judgemental, contritional rather than angry.
Cooke and director Colin Watkeys have together succeeded in telling this extraordinary story with all the humour and immediacy of an Irish bar room raconteur, Guinness in hand, a light caress to the grim facts, a good yarn.
By ignoring the fourth wall and talking directly to the audience four characters tell the tale with maximum impact, the tone always under Cooke's command.
The stage is a black box, Cooke wears a black frock, no props, all is pared down with nothing to distract.
She has you by the arm and you are immersed. Truth not drama informs a play '...dedicated to women who have suffered at the hands of mistaken ideologies'.
It never preaches nor condemns, instead it squeezes the heart with a glint in the eye.
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