How Bloody Sunday informed inspirational one-woman play about homelessness and addiction as Myra’s Story returns to Ireland from the West End

A LIFE can pivot on tiny quirks of fate – just ask Derry playwright Brian Foster, whose powerful Myra’s Story tragically reverberates with ‘What might have beens’.

In real life, too, the role of chance has been a prominent one for the writer who was unemployed and between “dead-end jobs” before a timely intervention opened up a new career in writing.

Now, another shot of serendipity is set to bring his powerful tale of a homeless woman, casually encountered on a Dublin bridge 25 years ago, to “a whole new level” with the signing of a four-year contract with Trafalgar Entertainment.

“When Myra’s Story opened in the Pavilion Theatre in Glasgow in 2023, it was just as the theatre had been sold to Trafalgar Entertainment - one of the biggest multi-venue operators in the world,” Foster explains.

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“Totally by chance, the whole Trafalgar team were there that evening and arrived into the auditorium to watch the play. They loved it and within two hours had offered to bring the show to the West End - where it made its debut in 2023.

“Trafalgar Entertainment has now taken over the production of the play worldwide, so opening on Broadway will, hopefully, happen at some stage in the near future. It is all very exciting.”

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Falling through the cracks of life

The background to Myra’s Story is interesting in itself, shot through with its own mix of destiny, timing and regret. Foster had been crossing the Ha’penny Bridge in Dublin in 1999 on the way back to his hotel, when he saw a woman sitting on a piece of cardboard, begging.

“Shamefully, I did what a lot of us have done,” he recalls. “I walked on by, pretending to be speaking on my phone. It was a freezing cold day and when I was back in my cosy hotel room, I couldn’t stop thinking about this woman living on the streets – back then, it would have been very rare to see a woman living like that – so I went back to try to find her, to maybe have a few words, to give her something.

“When I returned, though, she wasn’t there. There was just the piece of cardboard she had been sitting on. Who was she? How had she fallen through the cracks of life? She wasn’t old – late thirties, early forties, maybe, but there was a story in her eyes.”

He went home and started to create that story – the fictional back story of the woman who had disappeared but whose eyes continued to penetrate deep into his consciousness. The result, Maire: A Woman of Derry, was set in his home-town before he later switched the drama back to where it all began and rewrote the play as Myra’s Story, starring award-winning Dublin actor, Fíonna Hewitt-Twamley.

On a bare stage adorned with just a bench, bag and bottle, Hewitt-Twamley – who, since taking on the part in 2018, has claimed never to have washed the clothes of her on-stage persona, for a ‘whiff’ of authenticity - takes the audience on a poignant journey back into Myra McLaughlin’s past, acting out 15 other characters.

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A tough childhood is portrayed, but also romance as a young adult, then the effects of conflict and an unexpected tragedy…. everything laced together with gritty Dublin humour.

“There is a lot of hilarity and comedy in the play because many people who end up in the streets have had a normal upbringing with lots of laughter,” ventures Foster. “It wasn’t all doom and gloom – and people tend to retain a sense of humour, even if it’s a cynical one.

“Also, you couldn’t bring an audience into the theatre and take them through 90 minutes of misery; it just wouldn’t work. So, one minute the audience is laughing, the next, tears are running down their faces and they are breaking their hearts. It is a rollercoaster of emotions.”

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There but for the grace of God...

People make a very real connection with Myra – the actress who plays her has told of receiving parcels of food left at the stage door - because they can readily identify with her story, reasons the playwright.

“Every play should resonate with an audience,” he says, “but I think with Myra’s Story, people can see themselves up on the stage or they can see a friend or family member. It is a bit like, ‘There but for the grace of God...’

“We see what Myra’s life was like before she became an alcoholic, so the play shows how someone ends up like that. I think everyone sees how, if things had gone just a wee bit differently, people would never end up on the street the way they do.”

After leaving school at 16 with no formal qualifications, Foster got into writing “by chance” after answering a newspaper advert from the BBC calling for short scripts from people who had never written before. Following a one-year contract with BBC Northern Ireland, he decided to turn his attention towards theatre, writing debut play, The Butterfly of Killybegs, which was developed for the Lyric and went on tour in 2000.

Little twists of fate can send one person in one direction and another somewhere else entirely. Myra could indeed be any one of us

—  Brian Foster

Bloody Sunday, compassion and the anomalies of life

Myra has been by far his most successful work to date – a hit at three consecutive Edinburgh Fringes – and in it he has drawn on personal experience when depicting a family in crisis. Real life parallels include the mental trauma of watching his best friend being shot dead in Bloody Sunday, as well as the heartbreak of the sudden death of a baby within his wider family circle, alongside family experience of alcoholism and homelessness.

“In the play, things start to go wrong when Myra’s husband, Tommy, attends the Bloody Sunday march in Derry in 1972 and I know what that feels like,” Foster reveals. “I watched my best friend, Willie Nash, get shot dead, so I am giving my own eye witness account in Myra’s Story. Willie had been with me earlier in the march, but we got separated and he didn’t come home that day. He was only 19 and I was 20.

“People know about Bloody Sunday and the people who died, but what they don’t know is how the trauma affected the relatives and friends who were eye witnesses that day. There is an awful lot of untold trauma that carried on through people’s lives and this is a major factor in the change in Myra’s circumstances - through the way it affects her husband.”

Around 150,000 people have now seen Myra’s Story – raising thousands of pounds for homeless charities in the process - and what its creator hopes, more than anything, is that people continue to leave the theatre “with a wee bit more compassion” for those whose lives have unexpectedly taken a wrong turn.

“This play is set in Dublin but it could be set anywhere,” concludes the writer and grandfather-of-three, whose own family members have not been left untouched by similarly painful ‘quirks of fate’. “I had an uncle who died on the streets of Derry,” he says, “and the strange thing is, one of my uncle’s sons never touched drink, yet his other son became an alcoholic like his father and ended up dead in the back yard.

“It all re-emphasises to me the anomalies of life, personal susceptibilities and how little twists of fate can send one person in one direction and another somewhere else entirely. Myra could indeed be any one of us.”

Myra’s Story tours Ireland in the spring: Market Place Theatre, Armagh, March 7 and 8; The Millennium Forum, Derry, March 28 and 29; The Grand Opera House, Belfast, April 1-5; and Dublin Gaiety Theatre, May 5-10