The term “churching,” the accompanying programme to The Churching of Happy Cullen informs us, “refers to a blessing that mothers were given following recovery from childbirth” since “[m]any people considered that childbirth made a woman unholy or unclean because it resulted from sexual activity.” This performance dramatises in fragmentary form the traumatised psyche of a young woman who has been betrayed by society; in particular, by the patriarchal tenets of governance against which she is powerless. Happy’s world, in her own words, has ended—her infant daughter, Elizabeth, died shortly after birth. Her tragic situation is confounded by the lack of support available to her. She is “tainted” according to the Church and must be “purified” before she can attend her own daughter’s funeral. Happy’s father, who she once waltzed to Caruso with in their Dublin tenement flat, has died, and she has been deserted by her husband Michael who is out fighting with Larkin in the Dublin Lock-out. 
   
Happy’s story unfolds in an initially non-verbal, beautifully enacted physical performance by Lewis. The set is minimal with a locked door poignantly positioned at the back of the space. Lewis’ limbs move as though commandeered by a puppeteer, an unsettling reminder of her lack of agency and she repeatedly hurls her body against the back wall door in vain. This piece is an emotive reminder of Ireland’s historical failure to protect the dispossessed and our ethical obligation to bear witness to the voices that have been drowned out by subjective accounts of ‘history.’  

Star rating: ★★★★★