Men ‘shanghaied’ as women at heart of 1916 play ‘Plough and the Stars’

The struggle for the birth of a child is the work of love while armed struggle for the birth of a nation state is the work of hate, writes Victoria White

FORGET about it all. The whole shooting match. When you think of 1916 just remember the voice of Nora Clitheroe who was escorted home from searching for her Citizen Army husband in the violent streets of Dublin.

Accused of cowardice by combatant women, she says she “risked more for love than they would risk for hate”. She has her husband’s baby in her belly but loses it when he throws her away from him. Her blood, her screams, are graphically counter-pointed by the blood and screams of a dying insurgent in Seán Holmes’s powerful new production of The Plough and The Stars for the Abbey Theatre.