As Fiona Coffey cogently explains in the introduction to Political Acts: Women in Northern Irish Theatre, 1921–2012, Northern drama is often neglected in academic scholarship as well as on the stage for a variety of reasons: this includes the powerful influence of the Abbey Theatre and the dominance of Irish playwrights, as well as the North's complex historical circumstances, which can be difficult to represent to an audience unfamiliar with the specifics of this political background. When Northern drama is discussed, canonical playwrights such as Brian Friel and Stewart Parker tend to take the lion's share of the focus, and thus the contribution of women, in particular, is doubly marginalized. Although Irish theatrical scholarship has given some attention to Northern Irish dramatists such as Marie Jones, Christina Reid and Anne Devlin, most of the playwrights included in Coffey's study have received little critical attention – hence Coffey's important intervention into this area of inquiry.

Each of the three parts of the book has several chapters which provide salient sociopolitical context and historical framing, and then move into an incisive analysis of marginalized (but key) Northern women dramatists, theatre companies and theatre developments. In Part One, Coffey begins her trajectory with early twentieth-century Northern Irish playwrights Alice Milligan, Patricia O'Connor and Mary O'Malley. In Part Two, Coffey shifts to the Troubles period (1980–97) and foregrounds the significant contributions of the Charabanc Theatre Company and then the DubbelJoint and JustUs theatre companies. In the third and final part of the book, Coffey investigates the post-Agreement period from 1998 to 2012 and teases through the considerable differences between Troubles drama and post-Agreement theatre by focusing on contemporary playwrights Abbie Spallen, Stacey Gregg, Rosemary Jenkins and Shannon Yee.

The strengths of Coffey's account are manifold. Part One begins with an expansive sociopolitical overview of women and theatre in Northern Ireland and establishes a legacy of politically engaged women during the period of state formation. The chapters in this first part examine the complex role of gender and the impact of tightly controlled gender roles, the unique challenges that the women's movement(s) and feminisms of the North face, and the consequences of state censorship on theatre in the North. Part Two's particular strength is how Coffey puts the Charabanc Theatre Company in conversation with the DubbelJoint and JustUs theatre companies, as well as her analysis of unpublished plays from DubbelJoint and JustUs. Part Three – the most extensive in the book – features thought-provoking analyses of some cutting-edge women dramatists working in theatre today, with interviews conducted by Coffey herself. In addition to a comprehensive examination of the tensions between Troubles drama and post-Agreement theatre, Coffey concludes chapter 8 by considering the emergence of a queer-informed dramaturgy as well as what the future may hold for women in theatre despite the continued challenges they experience.

While admittedly mostly concerned with theatre developments produced in Belfast, Coffey's ambitious project covers a wide historical period and also highlights and connects women practitioners who have historically been overlooked in the sphere of Northern theatre. Coffey thus performs the crucial feminist work of reminding us of the constant and oppressive cycle of marginalization and forgetting that often accompanies work produced by women artists. Indeed, as Coffey powerfully demonstrates in her conclusion, many of the contemporary women playwrights whom she interviewed as part of her research admit that they have no knowledge of and little connection to these important historical predecessors, and they are furthermore reticent to have their own work labelled as ‘women's writing’, for fear of experiencing even less exposure of their work. Significantly, Coffey underscores how these two dynamics reinforce each other, and thus provides a powerful rationale for the urgency of her entire project. While it would have been instructive for Coffey to also include more well-known Northern Irish women dramatists such as Jones, Reid and Devlin, her compelling monograph – which builds upon recent scholarship by Scott Boltwood, Tom Maguire, Bill McDonnell, Catherine Morris, Mark Phelan and Melissa Sihra – provides a more inclusive view of Northern women's drama within Irish theatre history and the Northern Irish conflict, and creates rich opportunities for scholars to probe and contemplate additional connections.