UNITED STATES
History News Network – George Mason University
By Bruce Chadwick
8-27-12
Bruce Chadwick lectures on history and film at Rutgers University in New Jersey. He also teaches writing at New Jersey City University. He holds his PhD from Rutgers and was a former editor for the New York Daily News. Mr. Chadwick can be reached at bchadwick@njcu.edu.
Magdalen
New York International Fringe Festival
Gene Frankel Theater
24 Bond Street
New York, N.Y.
From 1765 through 1996, the Catholic Church in Ireland ran a chain of large laundries supervised by nuns called the Magdalene laundries. The workers, over 30,000 of them over the centuries, were all prostitutes, rape victims, sexually abused girls, troubled girls and, in later years, the mentally challenged. They were sent to the laundries by their families and the courts in the belief that hard work cleanses the soul and that the good sisters would rehabilitate the women.
They did not. Revelations in the 1990s finally illustrated that the women worked like dogs and lived like prisoners in workhouses attached to the laundries. Many spent years there and some their entire lives. The nuns were overly harsh in their treatment of the girls and many of the girls were physically, sexually and psychologically abused. The centuries of abuse came to light in 1993 when contractors who dug up a convent courtyard discovered 155 skeletons belonging to the girls at the laundries. Following that discovery, many of the girls finally went public and told their sordid stories. A national scandal followed. Several years later, another church sex scandal ensued when it was revealed that many young Irish boys were molested by priests.
The story of the girls, and the nuns, is told in a scorching new play, Magdalen, at the New York International Film Festival, that opened last week. The star of the one-woman play is Erin Layton, who delivers a heartwrenching and thunderous performance that both shocks brings tears. The theme of her electric show is how on earth could the nuns and priests get away with this for over two centuries. Minute after minute, like a slowly lit fuse, the play heats up, hotter and hotter, until it explodes like a criminal and sexual volcano at the end.
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