Kathy Burke’s ‘fun’ play set in Fifties highlights need for sex education

 
27 November 2013

Kathy Burke has told of the importance of sex education at school as she directs a play about the consequences of ignorance in young people during the Fifties.

The Harry Enfield and Gimme, Gimme, Gimme star is directing Once A Catholic by Mary J O’Malley about a girl’s innocent questions in a convent school in Willesden in 1957.

She said: “This play is about sexual awakening and the suffocation of sexual awakening. There’s a great difference between innocence and ignorance.

“The Catholic teaching was trying to help them maintain their innocence but all it did was drum in ignorance.”

Mary Rooney, played by recent Rada graduate Molly Logan, asks “perfectly valid questions about sex and all hell breaks loose,” said Burke.

She added: “She’s seen as someone who’s a complete rebel and opposed to the system but she just doesn’t know about sex. Sex education is absolutely important. Kids need to know about sex. The sad thing in this day and age is kids have access to all sorts of horrible stuff on the internet and they need to be taught the stuff about love and sex.”

Burke, 49, who attended a Catholic school, said watching Channel 4’s Educating Yorkshire had reassured her that school life today was more responsive than when she was growing up in Islington. I thought that if I had teachers like that maybe I would have ended up at university,” she said.

Her mother died of cancer when she was a toddler. Burke said: “When I was at school, I didn’t really feel that my situation at home was necessarily taken on board. Not having a mum is massive for a young girl really. There’s a lot more care and a lot more understanding about children. They are little souls that can be destroyed.

“This play has very different views about children altogether. I think rules are very very important and they are needed in life but now kids are allowed to have a voice.”

Burke, who lives in Islington, said the Tricycle Theatre was the “natural home” for the play, given it is set nearby. “This is a good fun show.

It’s a bit of a riot,” she added, insisting it was not grim like The Magdalene Sisters, Peter Mullan’s film about single mothers in Ireland.

Once a Catholic runs until January 18, tricycle.co.uk

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