Although Anne Devlin has lived in England since 1984, her Northern Irish background forms the political landscape for her dramatic work. Best known for her two stage plays, Ourselves Alone (1985) and After Easter (1994), she has also made important contributions to radio and television drama. Her consistent subject is the emotional consequences of the social, religious, and political ideologies by which Northern Irish women are defined. The traditional view of women, upheld by the potent combination of Catholicism and republicanism, maintains a role for them that is passive and largely silent, engaging the iconography of mother or innocent--the Virgin Mary being the ultimate embodiment of both. In exposing the contradictions inherent in these ideological gender roles, Devlin presents a revisionist approach to a patriarchal history that she sees as stifling the female voice.

Although her subject is women in a politicized setting, and her aesthetics are largely in line with...