LOYAL WOMEN. To 13 December.

London

LOYAL WOMEN
by Gary Mitchell

Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Downstairs To 13 December 2003
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat 3.30pm
BSL Signed 20 November
Runs 2hr 15min One interval

TICKETS: 020 7565 5000
www.royalcourttheatre.com (£1 off each ticket)
Review: Timothy Ramsden 19 November

Glimpses of female loyalists in Northern Ireland; vividly played but not sticking together as a steadily-developing drama.One measure of a play's quality is its entrances and exits. If they're unnoticed, that's good. Here, there's a growing awareness entrances happen without good cause. Arrivals seem haphazard or a matter of dramatic convenience. It's like bad verse where word order's made awkward to fit rhythm or rhyme. Ideas, not events, rule never a good thing in a play.

The play's about Loyalist women, but two people here are loyal in other ways. Brenda cannot help herself. She's even found a selfish motive in husband Terry taking the rap for a crime he didn't commit, and doesn't want him back. Yet she can't bring herself to accept the steady Mark himself later seen in an unsympathetically drunken state.

But Brenda wants out of the women's loyalist circle, its membership ranging from the ultra-respectable Maureen to hit-first Heather. Her relationship with Brenda's not helped by having spent a night with the newly-released Terry.

Michelle Fairley injects human complexity into Brenda, who could easily be the stock good person desperately trying to shore-up the wall against violence. Quick thinking, controlling temper under pressure, trying to make bargains, seeking to keep her daughter from the organisation, Brenda stands firmly as the play's centre

Sinead Keenan's Adele is more puzzling. Entering with the temper and tarty dress of a sullen, stupid teenager, Adele argues a more coherent case than the women who are effectively trying her for going with a Catholic boy suspected of IRA membership. She stands firm through considerable intimidation in defence of her right to the relationship.

Valerie Lilley covers over the half-realised nature of Terry's memory-impaired mother, while Lisa Hogg is spot-on as an annoying teenager, a mother who's yet to find her own maturity, something she looks for in the female loyalist gang. Good performances all round, including the two men in less developed roles which tend to revolve in never-increasing circles of characterisation.

Loyal Women has some interesting material and strong moments. But, overall, the play doesn't drive smoothly along; too often it's a bumpy, jumpy ride.

Rita: Valerie Lilley
Brenda: Michelle Fairley
Jenny: Lisa Hogg
Mark: Mark McCrory
Gail: Clare Cathcart
Maureen: Julia Dearden
Heather: Cara Kelly
Terry: Stephen Kennedy
Adele: Sinead Keenan

Director: Josie Rourke
Designer: Christopher Oram
Lighting: David Plater
Sound: Ian Dickinson
Assistant director: Elizabeth Freestone
Fight director: Richard Ryan
Dialect coach: Majella Hurley
Company voice work: Patsy Rodenburg

2003-11-20 00:17:52