‘Bold Girls’ Builds Up to Shattering End in Belfast

Marie Donnelly (Charlotte P. Landon) leads a quiet life--folding laundry, caring for her young son, trying to make ends meet on her meager part-time salary. At least, it would be a quiet life if not for the constant gunfire outside her modest home. It’s not that Marie is oblivious to the violence; on the contrary, she’s been left a widow because of it. But, like the other women in her besieged working-class neighborhood, Marie has become inured to cataclysm.

Set in Belfast in recent times, Rona Munro’s “Bold Girls” at the Hudson doesn’t presume to explicate the whys and wherefores of the conflict in Northern Ireland. The emotional richness of Munro’s drama derives from its very ordinariness--the shocking contrast between the harrowing and the mundane in the lives of its female characters, whose front stoops are literally on the front lines of a bloody internecine battle.

Marie, her neighbor Nora (Evelyn Celic) and Nora’s rebellious daughter Cassie (Mary Sprenger) determinedly carry on their routines in the midst of a raging firestorm. With their men dead or in prison, these bold, beleaguered women muddle through--bolstered by cups of tea, lime rickeys and a wonderfully bleak Irish gallows humor. It takes a mysterious teenage stranger (Jennifer Buchalter) and a startling revelation--not warfare--to unbalance their precarious domesticity.

This production, which has reopened at the Hudson after a previous run at Glaxa, suffers from a few pacing problems and obviously shoestring production values. However, under the direction of James Blevins, the actors pitch the proceedings in a resonantly low key, quietly building to a shattering emotional crescendo.

* “Bold Girls,” Hudson Backstage Theatre, 6539 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 p.m. Ends Sept. 28. $15-$18. (888) 566-8499. Running time: 2 hours.