LOVE ME SLENDER, Brooks, New Vic tll 15 Feb
Newcastle Under Lyme
LOVE ME SLENDER: Vanessa Brooks
New Vic Theatre: Tickets 01782 717962
Runs: 2h 30m, one interval, till 15 February
Eves at 7.30: Mat Sat 8 Feb 2.30
Review: Rod Dungate, 25 January 2003
Multi-layered, comic but hard edged a humane play with something to say to us all
Fat used to be a feminist issue. We understood that but now things aren't so simple (were they ever, in fact?) One of the great things about Vanessa Brooks's play is that it is full of ironies: it is a multi-layered play in which the humour is never quite comfortable and the dramatic moments have an unsettling comedic slant. Qualities that director Nona Sheppard deftly brings out.
Siobhan is stick-insect slim leader of a slimming club one-time slimmer of the year she shed 7 stones. But she rules the club with a Hitlerian rod of iron her need to control is a need she can't control (or can she?) A group of young, middling and older women come together to lose weight but, we are forced to wonder, who are they losing weight for? Themselves or to succeed, one way or another in a judgemental and mostly male led world.
Brooks may not have drawn the subtlest of characters for her play, but she has ingeniously constructed it. Food (and in particular chocolate) becomes not just a thing that controls the women, but a means our consumerist society uses to control them. The play is about control the women's control over their own destiny, Siobhan's need to control, the means by which the women have been controlled. In a marvellous about turn at the play's conclusion, Brooks brings this firmly into the light (literally) and drags her play from any hint of sentimentality ensuring it is hard and sharp edged. And the play speaks to us all.
Pauline O'Driscoll carries off Siobhan's emotional highs and lows with considerable aplomb she is terrifying, hateful and when need be sympathetic and chilling. Sue McCormick's Rosie is heartbreaking but there is nothing we can do to jolt her from her door-mat mentality. Kay Purcell (Claudette) injects some wonderful earthy humour into the evening, as does Hazel Maycock (Celia) except hers is rather higher class and in walking boots.
Lucinda: Amy Gravelle
Jean: Caroline Gruber
Kelly: Nia Gwynne
Celia: Hazel Maycock
Rosie: Sue McCormick
Siobhan: Pauline O'Driscoll
Claudette: Kay Purcell
Director: Nona Shepphard
Design: Judith Croft
Lighting: Daniella Beattie
Sound James Earls-Davis and Andy Kimberley
2003-01-26 17:15:21