The double bill is a great idea. You get dressed up and head out to the theatre just like normal, but get to see two plays and experience the lives of two separate sets of characters. If the first play doesn’t hit the mark you always have the second to enjoy after your half-time gin and tonic. Although if the first one is a winner you are a little sad to see it go.
Such is the double bill theatrical experience. If you want to experience it then head to the Tristan Bates Theatre in central London. Two short plays by George Bernard Shaw have been bundled together by Jane Nightwork Productions under the title Shaw’s Women. Village wooing and How he lied to her husband are both directed by Robert Gillespie and examine early 20th century issues of marriage and class. Both feature male writers – where could GBS have got his inspiration?
Village Wooing is the first and longer play, an hour’s two hander starring Madeleine Hutchins and Mark Fleischmann as characters known simply as Z and A, as though they are as far from each other as it is possible to get. It is the slight tale of the romance or otherwise between a country shop girl and a writer, with GBS claiming that Z was based on Lytton Strachey rather than himself. They meet on board a cruise ship, simply but successfully evoked with just a white railing and packing cases. Fleischmann’s older, reclusive writer finds Hutchin’s bombshell an annoying distraction from his work – and says as much in his side of the sharp dialogue they bat across the deck to each other.
When they meet again on land he has oddly mellowed. His complete forgetfulness of Z’s appearance shows just how little she meant to him, yet he now allows himself to be wooed, reversing the contemporary norms. Fleischmann manages to give A a gentle demeanour which counteracts some of the snobbish slights he directs at Z but though performed with gentle fortitude the character remains unpleasantly superior. Z’s enthusiastic perusal of A reflects a time when getting married and ‘the usual consequences’ were the only dream of young women. That breach of promise actions are a topic of conversation flags up how much the play has dated. The barriers Shaw describes have been broken, inter-class marriage may have been a big deal back in 1933, but now it seems a bit meh.
Second up is How he lied to her husband. A chaise longue, dusty bookshelves and occasional tables build a genteel 1905 South Kensington environment. Viss Elliot Safavi sparkles as society hostess Aurora dealing with the affections of Josh Harper’s much younger Henry. Another writer, this time Henry has fallen in love with the married Aurora and given her a manuscript of poems which sing the praises of her unusual name. This becomes a problem when the manuscript goes missing.
The plot appears to be set up for hilarity with a poetical McGuffin, but the play goes in a different direction. It lasts half an hour and much is plotless debate between the besotted lover and the older women. The arrival of Alan Francis’ jovial husband Teddy to claim his wife leads to an obvious twist that plays on the usual attitudes of husbands to admirers of their wives. Shaw dashed off the script, which references his more successful Candida, during ‘four days continuous rain’ during a Scottish holiday, at the behest of a famous actor who needed a short play to flesh out an evening’s theatrical programme in New York. Here Harper brings energy and some physical humour – his boxing stance is fun – but the script isn’t funny enough.
Jane Productions make a point of producing lesser known works. This keeps plays alive and allows us to experience them on the stage as intended. Some gems may be found that have been overlooked but often there is a reason why a play is lesser known.
6 – 31 January.
Tuesday – Saturday , 7.30pm & Sunday, 3pm.
Tickets £16 / £14 concs.
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