Lizzie Stark

Lizzie starts out on the margins of Small Heath's underworld, known to the Shelby men and sharp enough to survive among them. She's quick-tongued, practical, and unsentimental about what it takes to get by, watching Tommy and his brothers with the wary clarity of someone who has already learned not to expect much from powerful men.

O'Keeffe plays her with a flinty self-possession that never curdles into hardness — you always sense the calculation underneath the wit. The show gives her sharp, economical dialogue that cuts through the Shelbys' bravado, and she uses it to carve out a person who refuses to be background, however the men around her would prefer otherwise.