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slippy_underfoot 's review for:
The Wardrobe Department
by Elaine Garvey
“If I had two rooms to live in, I would spend my days believing I should be in the other one.”
In The Wardrobe Department, by Elaine Garvey (UK Release 13th Feb 2025) we are delivered to 2002, and the story of Mairéad, a young Irish woman who works in a small London Theatre. Creative and skilled, she’s finding her first job unglamourous: the costumes are in a constant state of disrepair, torn, stained, and stinking. In the cramped confines of the theatre it’s difficult to avoid the patronising and predatory cast and crew, and the show’s resident tyrant, Oliver, the producer of the current play. Charismatic, overbearing, and vindictive, he’s best avoided by the technical staff.
Mairéad feels out of place, at a sharp remove from her immediate colleagues. She imagines they sneer at her, seeing her as an ignorant yokel at loose in the big city. Aggrieved at this, she’s oblivious of her own shallow preconceptions about their lives.
Contact with her family in Ireland is minimal. It’s clear she’s come to London to escape something, to renew herself, feeling that she was out of place there too, but her loneliness has brought her to place of statis.
Everything she tried to leave behind still has a hold on her, distant voices berating and dismissive, fuelling her fears and self-doubt. If it’s better to be less visible – unnoticed and unattractive, a survival technique in a world of powerful, handsy men – what’s to stop you disappearing altogether?
A trip back to Ireland might provide a chance for Mairéad to look her history in the eye and understand what brought her here.
Mairéad is complex and convincing, and her story is told with persuasive acuity. Elaine Garvey has gifted each of her characters with assured nuance. Their words and actions allow us to build out their dimensions. She’s equally good at conjouring a sense of place and atmosphere with a light, effective, touch. I found myself delightedly wrongfooted at times by The Wardrobe Department, the plot veering away from the expected to tell a story full of truthful tenderness and hope.
In The Wardrobe Department, by Elaine Garvey (UK Release 13th Feb 2025) we are delivered to 2002, and the story of Mairéad, a young Irish woman who works in a small London Theatre. Creative and skilled, she’s finding her first job unglamourous: the costumes are in a constant state of disrepair, torn, stained, and stinking. In the cramped confines of the theatre it’s difficult to avoid the patronising and predatory cast and crew, and the show’s resident tyrant, Oliver, the producer of the current play. Charismatic, overbearing, and vindictive, he’s best avoided by the technical staff.
Mairéad feels out of place, at a sharp remove from her immediate colleagues. She imagines they sneer at her, seeing her as an ignorant yokel at loose in the big city. Aggrieved at this, she’s oblivious of her own shallow preconceptions about their lives.
Contact with her family in Ireland is minimal. It’s clear she’s come to London to escape something, to renew herself, feeling that she was out of place there too, but her loneliness has brought her to place of statis.
Everything she tried to leave behind still has a hold on her, distant voices berating and dismissive, fuelling her fears and self-doubt. If it’s better to be less visible – unnoticed and unattractive, a survival technique in a world of powerful, handsy men – what’s to stop you disappearing altogether?
A trip back to Ireland might provide a chance for Mairéad to look her history in the eye and understand what brought her here.
Mairéad is complex and convincing, and her story is told with persuasive acuity. Elaine Garvey has gifted each of her characters with assured nuance. Their words and actions allow us to build out their dimensions. She’s equally good at conjouring a sense of place and atmosphere with a light, effective, touch. I found myself delightedly wrongfooted at times by The Wardrobe Department, the plot veering away from the expected to tell a story full of truthful tenderness and hope.