Theatre Review: The Factory Girls Everyman, Cork

3/5

At the heart of Frank McGuinness’ play about the fight for survival in a shirt factory in the recessionary 1980s is a question posed by tough nut worker, Ellen, played with passion by Fionula Linehan.

Ellen asks a union official why she is stuck working in the factory in the first place and wonders what he ever did to get her out of there. This is a class issue and it’s also about the tedium of meaningless work measured in terms of speed of output.