REVIEW: The Marian Hotel - You will laugh. You may well cry. You will leave changed

Mark McCollum, an artist and survivor of the Marianvale mother and baby institution, reviewed "The Marian Hotel" recent performance at An Grianán Theatre, ahead of performances scheduled for February 23 and 24 at the Millennium Forum in Derry. 

At An Grianan Theatre I was reminded - once again - why theatre still matters. The Marian Hotel, written by Caitriona Cunningham and directed by Patricia Byrne of Sole Purpose Productions, is a brilliantly funny, emotionally searing and culturally significant work of contemporary Irish theatre. 

It is that rare production that entertains fully while refusing to soften the truth it carries. For me, it is not abstract. I am the son of a Derry woman sent to Marianvale Mother and Baby Home. I was born in Daisy Hill Hospital and taken from her by a social worker - carried across the border at a time when even butter was prohibited from crossing, yet a child could be transported without question. So I encounter this story not simply as history, but as inheritance. And yet what is most striking about this production is its vitality. 

This is not sombre, punishing theatre. It is alive - sharp - frequently laugh-out-loud funny. The dialogue sparkles. The comic timing is precise. Laughter moves easily through the auditorium before the emotional register shifts and the deeper currents of grief and injustice rise to the surface. That balance between humour and pathos is extraordinarily difficult to achieve. Here, it is handled with assurance and restraint. 

Cunningham’s writing refuses caricature. The women are drawn as layered - contradictory - resilient - wounded - fully human. Byrne’s direction maintains disciplined pacing and resists sentimentality, allowing silence to speak as powerfully as speech. 

Much of the production’s power rests with its cast, whose ensemble work is exceptional. Aoibhinn O’Doherty brings warmth and quiet steel to Kitty. Emma Mulligan’s Sarah carries both vulnerability and defiance.

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Roma Harvey gives Sinead a restless emotional charge, while Christine Clark’s Caroline balances humour with ache. Rachel Harley’s Ellen and Sorcha Shanahan’s Jackie offer finely observed portraits of women navigating impossible circumstances. Cathy Brennan Bradley as Sr Celeste and Maeve Connelly as Sr Rosanne avoid simplistic villainy. Their performances resist caricature, offering instead a more unsettling portrayal of institutional authority - disciplined, contained, and all the more chilling for it. Together, the cast create an atmosphere that feels authentic rather than staged. 

There are moments of roaring laughter. There are moments when the room falls utterly still. There is dignity throughout. The play interrogates shame - secrecy - class - gender - institutional power - and the policing of bodies and borders. It asks how a society normalised the separation of mothers and children. It examines not only the architecture of those institutions, but the culture of silence that sustained them. Yet it is equally a testament to resilience - particularly women’s resilience. 

Cathy Brennan Bradley and Emma Mulligan.

It honours endurance without romanticising suffering. It recognises the absurd humour that can flicker even in the darkest rooms. This is theatre that bears witness without losing humanity.

Theatre that understands that memory is not theoretical - it lives in families - in this city - in this generation. The production now moves to the Millennium Forum on 23rd and 24th February. Go and see it. Bring friends. Bring family. Bring students. You will laugh. You may well cry. You will leave changed.

Mark McCollum, artist and adoptee