Peel theatre company Sollan will stage a new production about two Manx women remembered for their punishment and untimely deaths at Peel Centenary Centre on Saturday 14 November, Isle of Man Today reports.
The show is called Drogh Vraane, Manx for “Bad Women”. It looks at the lives of Catherine Kinrade and Ann Thompson, and at how the verdicts passed on them have coloured the way they are remembered. Doors open at 19:30 and tickets are £15.
The first half is Forgiven, an English-language play by Sollan director Aalin Clague inspired by Kinrade. According to Isle of Man Today, Kinrade is said to have been keel-hauled as punishment for conduct her contemporaries called “immoral”. In the play, two friends with literary interests try to work out what really happened to her, and find that the record and later retellings do not agree.
After the interval comes a new folk musical in Manx about Thompson, who in 1833 was sentenced to seven years’ transportation to Botany Bay for the theft of 37 yards of lace edging. She never arrived. The convict ship Amphitrite was wrecked off the coast of France, and Thompson died along with almost every woman convict on board, the outlet reported. The musical mixes original songs by Clague with 19th-century newspaper commentary.
Clague told Isle of Man Today she was drawn to women who had been forgotten or remembered mainly for how they were judged. “I wanted to explore what these stories might tell us when viewed from a modern perspective,” she said.
Between the two halves, a “Sollan-tide Fair” will recreate the music and customs of Hollantide Fair, the traditional hiring fair at which women and girls looked for work for the year ahead.
Fellow Sollan director Nicola Tooms said audiences would be able to follow the musical without any Manx, as spoken English and programme notes will explain what is happening.
Clague, Tooms and Cori Philips set up Sollan in Peel in 2026 to develop new work by Manx writers, performers, musicians and artists.
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