Ironmistress

Ironmistress

Written by UK playwright April De Angelis, Ironmistress is a play in verse that follows Martha Darby, a widow who inherits her husband’s iron foundry in bleak Victorian England, a world where women had no power. On the eve of her young daughter Little Cog’s wedding, Darby engages in a night of games and storytelling that dredges up ugly memories and forces both women to confront their desires for dominance. Yates’s vision is both richly comic and darkly unsettling, and highlights the everyday barbarism towards women during the Industrial Revolution. Inside a mechanized cage, the audience will watch mother and daughter either breaking free of the male mantle of power or being destroyed by it.