Cuckoo-Land, The MAC, Belfast ★★★★★

I’ll be honest — I walked into The MAC knowing nothing about the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition. I walked out wondering how I’d never heard of them before.

Cuckoo-Land, Kabosh Theatre’s electrifying new production written by Vittoria Cafolla and directed by Paula McFetridge, tells the extraordinary true story of a group of women who built a political party from scratch in just six weeks and found themselves at the table helping to shape the Good Friday Agreement. Activists, mothers, academics, social workers — women who decided that if nobody was going to open the door for them, they’d kick it in themselves.

What makes this show so remarkable is how it takes a chapter of history that should be celebrated and makes you feel the full weight of how close it came to never happening at all. The misogyny these women faced — the heckling, the dismissal, the sheer relentlessness of being told they didn’t belong — is portrayed with a raw honesty that genuinely moved me.

By the interval I was furious. By the end, I was on my feet.

There is one scene, towards the end of the show, that I suspect will stay with every person in that audience for a long time. As the peace talks teeter on the edge of collapse, the women are forced to weigh their principles against compromise — and then fight, exhausted and battle-worn, for victims to have a place at the table. After everything they had already endured, watching them dig deeper still was quietly heartbreaking. It’s the kind of theatre that reminds you what the art form is actually for.

The performances are fabulous across the entire ensemble, delivering Cafolla’s sharp, funny and fiercely political script with total commitment and evident joy. The music, composed by Katie Richardson, is far more than accompaniment — it’s the engine of the whole production, driving the story forward with the charged energy of a punk gig. It gives Cuckoo-Land a pulse that never lets up, and the audience felt it. There was laughter and applause throughout, and when the final curtain came, the house rose instantly to its feet.

The themes here — women fighting to be heard, the cost of compromise, the battle for basic representation — feel as urgent today as they did in 1996. Cuckoo-Land doesn’t just tell a story from Northern Ireland’s past; it holds a mirror up to the present and dares you to look.

Essential viewing. Don’t miss it.
Cuckoo-Land runs at The MAC, Belfast until 26 April.