THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES. To 4 October.

London.

THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES
by Joanna Murray-Smith.

Vaudeville Theatre. To 4 October 2008.
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Mat Wed & Sat 2.30pm.
Runs1hr 40min No interval.

TICKETS: 0870 040 0084/0844 412 4663.
www.nimaxtheatres.com (booking fee on ‘phone & online bookings).
Review: Timothy Ramsden 17 July.

A cow on the front doorstep stands in for the elephant in the room as Australian playwright takes the feminist bull by the horns.
This is classy, but compromised. Australian playwright Joanna Murray-Smith has some very funny lines (most of the audience found considerably more than I did), plus a couple of house-rocking, stop-the-show moments.

Performances do well by the play, though by the last in the series of unexpected arrivals at feminist literary critic Margot’s country idyll, there’s little scope for Sam Kelly’s camp literary agent Theo to be other than a stereotype and plot-convenience in a conclusion recalling Joe Orton’s What The Butler Saw. And throughout, the skilful moments add up to little. It’s a shame, for Murray-Smith’s Honour came over finely as the Cottesloe, directed, as is Female, by Roger Michell.

But within the spacious, high-ceilinged luxury of Margot’s house, with its rural panorama, as designed by Mark Thompson, there’s a sense of skills running in overdrive with little to grip-on. It goes for director, designer – and cast.

Eileen Atkins carefully places Margot’s self-obsessed irony and lack of any sense of responsibility for the effect of her writing on others, one of the play’s twin points. Yet this aging feminist spends much of her time chained to the railings – or handcuffed to a desk in the corner, waiting for the playwright to throw her a scrap of dialogue. It’s her horrified responses to being called old that make the other point: the worst thing a radical can do is age, especially when finances demand publications continue to flow.

Sophie Thompson as her damaged daughter works hard but produces only the wild comic stereotype the script demands. The other men are a one-dimensional taxi-driver, whose arrival is the least convincing of all, and Margot’s son-in-law, whom Paul Chahidi invests with near-sublime ordinariness, before having to negotiate his character’s gear-changes at the plot’s bumpy behest.

Best is Anna Maxwell Martin’s Molly, holding Margot hostage in retaliation for her mother’s death, repeatedly trying to regain the initiative in “her” hostage situation against louder, older voices. It’s a perfect portrait, with gestures and facial expressions showing the unsophisticated vulnerability around her raw emotion - a beautifully detailed, piping-voiced performance that deserves more of its play.

Margot: Eileen Atkins.
Molly: Anna Maxwell Martin.
Tess: Sophie Thompson.
Bryan: Paul CHahidi.
Frank: Con O’Neill.
Theo: Sam Kelly.

Director: Roger Michell.
Designer/Costume: Mark Thompson.
Lighting: James Whiteside.
Sound: Matt McKenzie.
Hair consultant: Linda McKnight.
Fight director: Terry King.

2008-07-20 23:26:11