An intense psychological drama set in a women’s prison, in which a mother and daughter try to break through the barriers of time, memory and punishment which separate them.
Josie is seeing her mother Fay for the first time in a while – she’s never walked into a prison before, and she’s been putting it off for fifteen years. Fay is serving life for murdering her husband with a kitchen knife. Her daughter needs to find out why she can’t remember anything that came before that terrible night, why her own mother would kill her father. Uncovering the memories they share is going to be more perilous than either of them can imagine…
Rona Munro’s play Iron was first performed at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, in July 2002, transfering to the Royal Court Theatre, London, in January 2003. It went on to win the 2003 John Whiting Award.
‘An exceptionally gripping and deeply moving play… psychological drama at its best – tense, harrowing, yet also powered by an unsentimental fund of compassion’
— Daily Telegraph
‘Rona Munro’s quietly impressive play seems simple enough on the surface, but, like her characters, it has hidden depths. It is a love story about how women love men unwisely and too well, and about the painful, twisted, sacred love between mothers and daughters. There is something of Josie and Fay in almost every mother-and-daughter relationship’
— Guardian
John Whiting Award
