Bold Girls

Set in Belfast, Northern Ireland, U.K., in 1991, Bold Girls can be seen as a treatment of the Troubles in England's last colonial outpost. More profitably, it can be taken as a look at the yearnings of four women in constricting surroundings. That's the tack taken in Fort Lauderdale by the Women's Theater Project in the play's southeastern premiere. (Theaters in Atlanta and the Washington, D.C., area have openings scheduled for April.)

Bold Girls centers on three Roman Catholic friends of two generations -- Marie, in whose house most of the action occurs; her friend, Cassie; and Cassie's mother, Nora. The three have absent husbands, lost to imprisonment or death in the violence that grew in neighborhoods, Catholic and Protestant, struggling with unemployment and competing identity crises.

There's also a stranger, Deirdre, a mysterious teenager. Her name echoes an Ulster legend of father-daughter tragedy, but it isn't necessary to know that in order to see her as the Bold Girls chorus, a stand-in for Belfast and the situations that rob these women and children of peace and opportunity.

The dynamics here are universal -- misplaced loyalties, favoritism and fear, secrets and betrayal among family and friends. But that doesn't make it a successful play. Scottish playwright Rona Munro, who wrote Bold Girls in the year of its setting, told the U.K.'s Guardian newspaper in 2003 that it was "based on chats I had with women at two in the morning over a bottle of gin." That's easy to believe. The three friends spend much time sitting around talking. That said, the production under director Genie Croft does well by the material. The actresses -- Jennifer Gomez as Deirdre; Deanna Hanson as the stalwart widow, Marie; Kathy Ryan as Nora, the mother who tells funny-sad stories; and Tania Tesh as Cassie, the daughter who dreams and schemes of getting off the island -- are consistent in indicating one of Northern Ireland's tricky accents (think "hice" for "house").

Tech credits are fine. Erinn Dearth's set delivers the suggestion of a low brick wall downstage appropriate to brick-built Belfast and a living room for Marie, complete with a painting of the Virgin Mary on the wall. Meanwhile, Tesh gets an assist, though her performance doesn't need one, from a sudden splash of color after intermission -- a red dress, and all that it symbolizes.