Laundry to reopen on theatre stage

THE doors of the last Magdalene Laundry to close are to reopen to stage a controversial play during Dublin’s Theatre Festival.

Laundry will feature the stories of women confined to the notorious workhouse on Sean McDermott Street in the north inner city.

Director Louise Lowe said the impact the site had on the locality — from the residents who used it, one man who was born in it, to another who fell in love with a woman there — will also be relived.

A single audience member at a time will travel through a labyrinth of rooms and a chapel inside the imposing convent to experience the 90-minute multimedia production, featuring actors, audio and visual installations.

Ms Lowe, who grew up in the area, stressed while the production will not represent the Sisters of Charity, the religious order that ran the workhouse, it will acknowledge their community work.

“The convent was responsible for a local soup kitchen and provided laundry facilities to poorer families in the area,” she said.

“We can’t ignore what we found out happened there, but we can’t ignore the good work they did either. We are not trying to create The Magdalene Sisters again, we are looking at the stories that came from there.”

An international torture watchdog has also urged a statutory inquiry involving the religious congregations who ran the homes, and raised grave concerns over the failure of the state to protect the hundreds of girls and women involuntarily confined in the Magdalene Laundries between 1922 and 1996 — when the Sean McDermott Street site finally closed.