Bold Girls Rona Munro

The play “Bold Girls” by Rona Munro is heavily based upon the theme of “the truth”. There are four main characters, whose lives are troubled with trying to avoid an unwanted truth. One character however “Deirdre” stands out from the others as the one whose goal is to seek out the truth. This character –different to the rest- changes the course of the play as well as the other’s lives, as she attempts to reveal the truth. In the beginning of the play Deirdre’s first appearance is very strange.

She is out of darkness only showing her face.

The stage directions “crouching on all fours” is like an animal staking its prey, which is very appropriate for what is to come later. The first thing we hear from her is a grim monologue painting a scene with a very negative description. She says things that contrast like the colors grey and green, hinting at the theme of hope and hopelessness in the times she lives in.

“Somewhere a bird is singing and falling in the sky” this phrase again helps convey the difference between dull and brighter times. I feel as well that it is beginning to suggest at the theme of avoiding the truth.

Bold Girls Summary

The truth faced by the characters is daunting and unpleasant. With the bird singing and falling at the same time, it is the same as the other characters being pulled down by the truth yet acting as though everything as fine.

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With the next reappearance of Deirdre she starts immediately to be portrayed as a threat to the women. Especially with the use of stage directions again “There was a thunderous knocking at the front door”. It changes our view of Deirdre instantly as not only a strange character but a potentially dangerous one.

Her entrance suggests that her presence in the women’s lives is going to have consequences. In this scene where she enters the house she behaves very strangely. She reluctantly answers questions, and gives very little information about herself away. This continues to add to the mysterious image Deirdre has. When in the house she begins to take action. Her mission: to reveal the truth. Not only in attempt to find it for her own sake but to use it to put an end to the women’s constant evading of it and the consequences that come with it.

She Steals Cassies’s money that she had been saving up in hope to move away to escape her life in North Ireland. Each of the girls had individual dreams, that helped to take their focus of there own situations. Marie’s was to have the perfect family, Nora’s to build the perfect home for herself, and Cassie’s to simply run and leave everything behind. Each of these is ruined on the way of Deirdre’s attempt to seek the truth. She exposes Cassie’s affair with Michael (Marie’s now deceased husband) to Marie.

Also she destroyed “The fifteen yards of pale peach polyester” fabric that was destined to make her house “just a wee dream”. “I need a knife. A wee blade of my own…. A wee bit of hard truth you could hold in your hand and point where you liked. ” Munro uses symbolism with the knife as to obviously represent the truth. This quote continues the feelings that Deirdre is a threat to the three. As it is almost literally saying she will use the truth as a weapon. She is portrayed as a cold person who will use any means at her disposal to get what she wants.

Although Munro sympathises with her when she describes her as a victim with her appearance- ripped clothes, running make up, bruises and cuts. She is almost like Nora, Marie and Cassie in the way they have all been suffered from men’s actions. In the end Deirdre achieved her mission. She exposed Cassie’s involvement with Michael, although she may have admitted it eventually, Deirdre prompted her to confess everything. Marie was made to accept that Michael was a cheat. This suspicion was always there but she had readily ignored the thought that it might be true.

In a shocking turn of roles Marie used Deirdre’s knife to slash the picture of Michael showing that she was finally facing up to the truth and destroying the once all important image of the man she trusted. Nora too was affected by Deirdre, as she was forced to accept that her decorating was only a temporary measure to take her mind off the troubles. For Deirdre’s own sake though, not just to force the others out of hiding; but to seek out the truth about her father. Who was in fact Michael which ties the whole play up in the end with the whole truth being revealed.