Hanna Greally was incarcerated in Mullingar Mental Hospital after a nervous breakdown at the age of 19, and remained there for almost 20 years, from the 1940s to the 1960s. She maintained that she was not ill, but no one would sign her out, and there she stayed. Eventually she wrote a book about her experiences, Bird's Nest Soup, published in 1971.
The play Cracked has been devised by Quare Hawks theatre company not so much as an adaptation of the book, but as a response to it. Three actresses - Dawn Fleming, Liz Keller and Diane O'Keefe - play all the roles. They create an atmosphere of disorientation, in which women plead for help and get none. They write pitifully to their families: sorry for everything, better now, please bring me home.
The choreographed movement is sometimes inherently violent, rather like a Maori war dance, but the cast is always in control and creates images that linger. Liam Halligan's direction is enormously effective throughout.
This play is a tribute to the 1,200 unnamed victims of the mental health system buried beside the hospital, and its creators deserve a badge of high merit.
Tours to Listowel, St John's Arts Centre, November 22nd (068-22566); Kilworth Village Arts, November 23rd; Macroom Briery Gap Arts Centre, November 24th (026- 41793); Monaghan Garage Theatre, November 30th (047- 81597); Moate Tuar Ard Arts Centre, December 1st (0902- 82042); Manorhamilton, The Glen Centre, December 2nd (072-55833).
