Pascal Theatre Company today announces the revival of Julia Pascal’s play A Manchester Girlhood, based on the lives of three Manchester Jewish women and their Romanian immigrant parents.
The show opens at Blackpool Old Electric Theatre on 20 April, Manchester Jewish Museum on 23 April, followed by London dates at Burgh House on 17 May and a run at JW3 from 21 – 23 May 2023.
Pascal directs a cast including Lesley Lightfoot, Amanda Maud, Eoin O’Dubhghaill and Giselle Wolf. Based on Pascal’s own family roots, the show premièred in Manchester in 2019 and explores themes of family loyalty, identity, patriotism and what it means to be a woman.
In Bucharest 1910, Esther Goldenberg has been forced to marry Emanuel Jacobs. He is her parents’ choice. The two young Romanian Jews go to Manchester and have three daughters, Isabel, Edith and Pearl. Isabel’s only ambition is to be a doctor’s wife. Edith becomes a soldier. Pearl marries a GI. These three sisters are at the heart of the drama.
This dream-like text explores the idea that each person relives intense moments from a whole life in the moment before death.
Characters are seen both as children, young, mature and elderly women. This is not a linear drama. It is a mosaic that collages intense experiences within the outer drama of world events including World War Two and racism in the US.
The play explores the importance of women’s education, marriage and unexplored, erotic desire. These unknown women’s experiences offer the audience a sense of the large political framework through the lives of the unheard. The total effect is to expose the boundless energy of women who have not been allowed the education to fulfil their brilliant potential.
