She Town

Set in ‘the backies’ in the summer of 1936 She Town includes a large female cast made up of members of Dundee Rep Ensemble and community actors.

Friendships, loyalties and family ties are challenged as tensions rise among a group of Dundonian women. Working all day in the mills to support their families whilst their ‘kettle biler’ husbands stay at home, the women find camaraderie and their voices. As the local choir audition to sing with Paul Robeson at Caird Hall others are campaigning for the rights of the mill workers. Read more …

Many miles from Dundee the Spanish Civil war rages and will have a lasting effect on the lives of the local women.

The critical consensus

With so many people on stage and with such polemical material, you would expect something celebratory and defiant. This seems muted and humourless.

Mark Fisher, The Guardian, 17/09/2012

Any one of these subjects might make for an interesting play, but thrown together, as they are here, in a barely connected series of sketches, and one ends up with an overlong and dreadfully structured drama.

Mark Brown, Scottish Stage, 17/09/2012

Although director Jemima Levick does an artful job of evoking the life of the tenements, in a production full of movement, the play puts more emphasis on misery than resilience. It seems less a celebration of community than a eulogy for a defeated generation.

(*) (*) Francis McLachlan, The List, 20/09/2012