The Bread & Roses Theatre in Clapham 12 – 30 April. Reviewed by Claire Roderick
Set in a bathroom in a shared house, Clare McIntyre’s 1988 play about three very different women is an interesting but disjointed piece. Jo Jones’ set is fantastic – a big claw foot bath on a black and white tiled floor, overflowing washing basket and a wall covered in scraps of stained floral paper suggesting a slightly grubby shared house.
When the audience walk in, Jo (Rebecca Pryle) is already in the bath, shaving her legs. We don’t learn much about Jo throughout the play, apart from her fantasies about meeting rich men and the life she could have, if only she were prettier and thinner. Pryle gives Jo lots of spirit, and just about manages to portray the underlying loneliness and lack of self-worth in her quieter moments, but the lines she has to churn out get repetitive and undermine any sympathy you feel for her.
Mary (Tessa Hart) begins the play having just set fire to a deckchair. Mary appears on the edge of a breakdown at first, ranting about other people’s lives having nothing to do with her and being left alone, but then, after a sexual assault and a party, somehow appears to have had an epiphany and stoically reassures Jo that nothing will change, so just get on with life. How the hell did that happen? Did I doze off and miss a vital scene? Hart makes Mary slightly annoying with her constant questioning of men and sexual values (not her fault – script again), and shines in her first monologue describing her sexual assault. I was expecting more fear, but the subtle reactions Hart chose were exactly in keeping with her earlier performance. Her second monologue about the giant billboard however was where I started to lose patience, yes, it is important to question the objectification of women, but what a cliché to use.
The third housemate is Celia (Sassy Clyde), a character who seems to have wandered in from another play. Posh and head girl like, Celia provides the much needed comic relief – with Clyde revelling in her pre and post coital scenes, conveying so much without words.
And it’s the words that are the problem here. The panic of the title is not present in the meandering conversations about sexual fantasies and pornography. Nothing seems to gel, and the play just feels like a set of monologues thrown together. It may be that the play hasn’t aged well in this era of social media, internet porn and body shaming, even though the main theme is sadly still relevant, but for me, this was a bit of a misfire.