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Stars explained: * A production of no real merit
with failings in all areas. ** A production showing evidence of not
enough time or effort, or even talent, and which never breathes any real
life into the piece – or a show lumbered with a terrible script. *** A
good enjoyable show which might have some small flaws but has largely
achieved what it set out to do.**** An excellent show which shows a
great deal of work and stage craft with no noticeable or major
flaws.***** A four star show which has found that extra bit of magic
which lifts theatre to another plane. |
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Whine, women and 223 words The Female of the Species Highbury Little Theatre, Sutton Coldfield **** THIS is
feminism taking itself too seriously – in the artistic cause, fashioned
by playwright Joanna Murray-Smith, of being laughed at.
The laughs come mainly
in the second half of Liz Parry's lively studio production, well after
it has justified the programme's cautionary note about adult language –
which it achieves in fact in the first few seconds, when the central
character bursts onto the empty stage with a single-syllable word and
lots of noise. She proclaims two F-words and one blasphemy
before you have time to sort the most comfortable spot on your
unyielding studio seat. This is our first look at Margot Mason, self-centred
feminist writer who is being hounded by her publisher and has so far
written just 223 words of her next book. Any hope she has of appeasing
him is soon lessened by the fact that she is on the wrong end of a
revolver that is in the hands of a woman whose life has been put into
turmoil by Mason's previous books and who thinks it's time to give rein
to the grudge that she holds against her.
But Margot Mason has upset a host of people with
her previous literary outpourings. It's surprising that they are not
forming an orderly queue on the front door step. Perhaps they would be,
if the unseen mooing cow that has got there before them had not been in
the way. Liz Hale plays the writer with a whine and an affronted sense of being the victim of the world at large. She's prone to writing books with vagina in the title, and right now she hasn't a hope of meeting any deadline, because – even discounting the interesting intruder with the gun – her house is full of visitors. GUN-TOTING GIRL By the time the fun has run its course, there are
five of them – her daughter, her son-in-law, her publisher, a man who
has played a significant role in her past and the gun-toting girl with
the grudge, who at least keeps coming up with phrases that the writer
feels are worth jotting down for future use. Not that Daisy Hale – real-life daughter of Liz –
sets out to scare the pants off anybody. Her Molly Rivers is distinctly
self-effacing. She wears a puzzled expression like a favourite dress,
seemingly reluctant to change it – and not to be decried on that
account, because it suits the unassuming Molly quite splendidly.
How unassuming is she? Well, at one point she
feels she has to remind the assembled company that this is her
hostage situation. This is a gun girl who turns out to be the most
likable character of them all – indeed, somebody says that for a
homicidal maniac she is awfully sweet – but she clearly can on no
account allow her big moment to be hijacked. Then there's Tess. She is Margot's daughter –
hard-pressed mother of three, at war with the world and required
tomorrow to make a cinema, out of balsa wood. This is a lively, fiery
performance by Heather Johnson; an ear-catching account of an
“exhausted, miserable and empty woman” who is going to fight her corner
as long as she has breath. Dan Payne is her husband, Bryan – amiable, stocky
and charged late on with the task of recapping the story thus far, which
he does with admirable fluency. And there's Frank (Dave Douglas), who
makes no bones about putting the regrettable Margot in her place and who
maintains the confident word flow that is the strength of the
production; and Neil Weedon, the publisher who arrives late-on and turns
out to be another likable citizen. There were a small number of intermittent mishaps
with the script – which was a surprise, as I did not manage to get there
until the fourth night – but in general there was a well-maintained
pace. Ironically, this merely indicated how nearly the performance could
have come to perfection if the gremlins had not insisted on being
involved. To 09-04-11. John Slim |
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