Word: womanhood
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Playwright Karen Malpede intended the work to be a celebration of womanhood and woman's fertility. At a crucial and trying moment early in the play Macha states, "Bind me to life." Both she and her daughter Etain (Courtney Williams) see themselves as bound to life, and the phrase as their emblem...
...Macha celebrates the regenerative process of birth when she says, "There is no love like the love I bear for Etain." She and her daughter, the only truly successful female characters, are exemplars of binding to love and life, and they view that binding as the quintessence of their womanhood...
...portrayal this ennobled idea of womanhood and woman-strength, Malpede is effective. But the script is not without its problems. As much as the text glorifies the feminine it is a polemic against the masculine. The male characters are an array of negative masculinity stereotypes...
Macha's husband, Ian, the shepherd (Stephen Frick) is a caricature of a fool. Though he is appreciative of womanhood and respectful of his wife, his weaknesses and stupidity are the cause of her wrestling--while pregnant--with Lord Owain. We sympathize with Macha when she asks, "Are all those who practice a gentle touch weak in the brain...
...sexually exploit women as the two most evil male characters do, this is due to his priestly duties and possibly to his homosexuality. As a representative of Christianity, he influences, through religion, the two women in the work who most fail to live to the potential of their own womanhood. The first, the elder Etain (Patty Goldman), Conor's mother, dies in child birth seemingly because she is afraid of it. The other, Elen (Jennifer Harris), Angus' molested daughter, turns from her incestuousness to chastity...