Myra's Story

A woman who had gone by the time he came back

Brian Foster is from Derry and came to writing late, by accident: he answered a BBC advertisement and found a trade that nobody in his background had practised, in a house where theatre trips were unheard of. The play that has defined his career began in 1999 on Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge, where he passed a woman begging and walked on. She stayed in his head. When he went back to find her she had gone, and all that was left was the flattened cardboard she had been sitting on. He invented a life for her instead — fictional, but assembled out of the street drinkers he had known at home.

Foster's own history sits inside the writing rather than beside it. He witnessed Bloody Sunday in Derry in 1972, and saw his best friend, Willie Nash, shot dead. He has described the play as carrying that: "I watched my best friend get shot dead, so I am giving my own eye witness account." The result is a piece about how a person arrives at the bottom by increments, and about the specific social reflex of looking away from them.

The performer who made it a phenomenon

The role belongs to Fíonna Hewitt-Twamley, a Dublin actor and IFTA nominee whose screen work includes Red Rock, Ripper Style credits on television such as Ripper Street, and Charlie. She plays Myra McLaughlin and, by the current production's count, sixteen characters in total — mother, friends, officials, drinkers — switching between them through voice and posture with no costume changes and nobody else on stage.

The production in its present form opened at the Pavilion Theatre in Glasgow in 2023 and transferred to London's West End the same year, after Trafalgar Entertainment executives saw it and took it on. A four-year worldwide distribution arrangement with Trafalgar now handles where it goes next, with Broadway raised as an ambition rather than a booking.

One detail says a good deal about how the piece is approached: Hewitt-Twamley has not washed the stage costume across the eight years she has been performing it, a deliberate refusal to tidy up what the clothes are meant to represent.

The shape of the piece

The structure is a single day. Myra sits by the Ha'penny Bridge begging from passers-by and talks directly out to the house, and the day keeps opening backwards — teenage love and friendship first, then heartbreak, abuse and loss, until the chain of small reversals that put her on the pavement is complete. It is funny for long stretches before it is anything else; a comic set piece involving a garden gnome called Norris and a bottle of Russian vodka is the one reviewers tend to quote back.

Staging is close to nothing: a bare stage and a bench, with the characterisation carrying the whole load. It runs about ninety minutes with an interval. Venue guidance has varied between 12+, 14+ and an Irish 15A rating, with warnings for strong language and adult themes.

Where it stands now

The 2026 run began with a date in the main house at Birmingham Rep on 15 March, reviewed by James Garrington for The Reviews Hub, who gave it full marks and called it a mature, humane and thoroughly compelling piece of theatre, noting that Hewitt-Twamley carries it entirely alone across ninety minutes while playing more than fifteen parts.

The West End return followed on 12 and 19 April 2026 at the Trafalgar Theatre — four performances in total, at 2pm and 6pm, tickets from £25, age guidance 14+, produced by Amber Allen and sharing the building with Oh, Mary! The London dates were partnered with The Connection at St Martin's, a Westminster homelessness charity. West End Wilma gave the run five stars and wrote that the play does not ask for pity, it demands empathy.

The money is part of the record rather than a footnote. Over eight years the production has raised more than £450,000 for homeless charities, and Hewitt-Twamley has said the target is a million pounds. Audience figures have been climbing through the publicity too: most listings through 2025 and early 2026 cited over 150,000 theatregoers across Ireland, the UK and North America, while the Everyman Cork listing for the October 2026 dates puts it above 250,000.

The diary and the room

Before the West End dates the show had already done a substantial Irish spring in 2025 — Armagh on 7 and 8 March, Derry on 28 and 29 March, Belfast from 1 to 5 April and Dublin from 5 to 10 May — followed by Glasgow's Pavilion from 25 to 27 April that year. The current on-sale block is autumn and winter: the Palace Theatre in Southend on 11 October 2026, the Everyman in Cork on 13 and 14 October at 8pm at €30, and three nights at The Lowry in Salford from 20 to 22 October 2026. Glasgow's Pavilion then takes it back for a full week, 26 to 31 January 2027, at £29.50 to £32.50 — a third visit after two earlier sellout runs there.

Reviews are consistent on the performance and less so on the ending. Writing for Glasgow Theatre Blog after the April 2025 Pavilion run, the reviewer found it funny and heart-wrenching in equal measure and a welcome alternative to the sweeter touring fare, but judged that the final scene, a drunken stupor, drags and takes some force out of the close. Venue notices lean on the Irish Times calling Hewitt-Twamley extremely impressive, Everything Theatre's line about a fine display of Irish storytelling, and Broadway Baby's verdict of an outstanding play. What recurs in the accounts is the curtain call: Hewitt-Twamley steps out of the character to ask the house to meet homeless people with compassion rather than judgement, on the grounds that trauma, not choice, puts people there — and that is the moment several reviewers have named as the one that lands hardest.