Mixed Marriage is an intense and claustrophobic play set solely in one location; the living room of Protestant family the Raineys. The head of the family, John Rainey (Daragh O’Malley), is an influential man in his local community and is seen to want to resolve the conflicts that are tearing the workers apart, however he is reluctant to deal with his own innate prejudice about Catholics.

The play begins with a bustling and warm family setting, the mother of the family, Mrs Rainey (Fiona Victory), forcing tea down her family’s throats with good cheer and welcoming in her son’s friends, eager but fearful to hear the news of the strike that has been threatened. Tensions begin to arise as John becomes suspicious of Nora (Nora-Jane Noone), the Catholic sweetheart of his son Hugh (Christopher Brandon), and this grows to disastrous proportions as the play goes on, balanced precariously against John’s willingness to resolve the worker’s dispute hand-in-hand with the only Catholic he will tolerate at his table, his son’s friend Michael O’Hara (Damien Hannaway).

The set is a realistic period living room with a window and door to the outside world facing the back of the stage, with fine gusts of mist that enter every time an actor enters or exits. The claustrophobic atmosphere of being confined to one location exacerbates the growing tensions of the play, with only brief insights into the action of the streets or meeting halls offered by a couple of recorded speeches to the workers made by John Rainey that serve neatly to cover scene changes.

Although the concerns of the play lie in resolving sectarian disputes in order to deal with the exploitation of labour by the bosses, there is a big issue around the roles of men and women in the play that is initially played for laughs with the jovial family bickering in the Rainey household and is tragically soured by the end of the play. Although it would be fruitless to criticise the portrayal of the roles of men and women in the play, as presumably this is a historically accurate contemporary portrayal of everyday family life, it is still infuriating to see Nora taking on the burden of blame because she feels she has ‘tempted’ a man. The injustice in this is plain for a modern audience to see and perhaps this is playwright St John Ervine’s way of showing that the foolish stubbornness of otherwise good men results in the sacrifice of innocent people. However it is still very hard to take as an audience member without wanting to get up and bang all their heads together.

In all an infuriating but thought-provoking script carried well by good performances and sound set and costume design.

Mixed Marriage is playing at the Finborough Theatre until 29th October. For more information and tickets, see the Finborough Theatre website.