Electric Rosary - Royal Exchange Theatre

A STRUGGLING convent whose nuns even lack the money to mend its perpetually leaking roof finds the most unlikely of saviours in a play that’s simply one of the most original to be seen on the Manchester professional stage for a very long time.

When Mary joins the leaderless order she instantly shows a dedication to the most menial of tasks that can only be described as super human.

That’s because Mary, with her fixed and softly sinister smile, isn’t human at all. She’s a robot.

And the floor of the convent ends up so clean you could eat your dinner off it. Minus the plates and the cutlery.

Tim Foley’s remarkable piece, which won the RET’s Bruntwood Playwriting Competition in 2017, is sure to pose a number of questions among audience members as they make their way home or enjoy a post performance drink.

I wondered while watching this if it was a play about the irrelevance of religion to many people today. After all, the nunnery in which the string of bizarre events take place seems physically far removed from that of the masses who seems to be raging against the machines in some sort of latter day Luddite Rebellion.

But this doesn’t feel like a play that’s anti-religion.

The nuns world may be dark and dystopian but Foley expertly provides some light relief courtesy of some wonderful one liners, a gift for Breffni Holahan who plays Mary, forever wearing a fixed, softly sinister smile.

Scripts as good as this are a gift for actors and Holahan delivers her lines with laser guided precision. She looks, sounds and moves like a robot, telling it how it is.

Electric Rosary should have been performed five years ago which only goes to show the best things come to those who wait. Unmissable.

Until May 14. Tickets are available from royalexchange.co.uk. Star rating - ****

Photo by Helen Murray.