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Kirsty Besterman as Nancy, Elisabeth Dermot Walsh as Diana and Flora Spencer-Longhurst as Debo. Pictures: Mark Senior The Party Girls Coventry Belgrade *** One went with high hopes to the Belgrade to see this latest play, fresh from the Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury. It’s by Amy Rosenthal, who with a dozen plays to her name, has won enviable accolades for her dramatic writing, not least the Sunday Times Drama Award, in 1999 aged 25, for her debut play Henna Night - about as impressive an achievement as it gets, short of a BAFTA TV award. It’s worth noting that she studied her crafting skills at the University of Birmingham, gaining a Masters Degree in – what could be more suitable? – Playwrighting, impressively a go-ahead option on the Edgbaston syllabus a quarter of a century ago. She now teaches for the Arvon Foundation, the UK’s supreme poetry and creative writing courses. Excitingly, The Party Girls is a world premiere, and it’s now on tour. The Belgrade comes second after the Marlowe, followed in the Midlands by Malvern, Oxford Playhouse and the Birmingham Rep; so there’s a good chance of catching it somewhere near you. Except that one might not bother. The Party Girls portrays – not wholly unsuccessfully – the different characters of the Mitford sisters – there were six (five here) – who became well known, and somewhat notorious (even scandalous) in the 1930s for their various loudly expressed political views. We get hints of that in part one, especially from the amusingly contrasted posters, photos, even flags which glare at each other across the family sitting room: one sister (Jessica) pro-Communist; two of them polar opposites (Hitler-adoring Unity and likewise Fascist Diana, who in 1933 married the British Fascist leader Oswald Mosley). The script gives us a lot of banter between them, quite a lot of bitching, but very little of it is interesting, or penetrating, or delving. Perhaps – in fact doubtless - an aim of it is to portray, or underline, their irresistible ineptitude. It has something of the Noel Coward/Somerset Maugham era, not inappropriate. But plenty of those period pieces have lost their sheen, and that is certainly the case here. Richard Beecham’s production focuses, as it should, on three different venues: none of them here especially enticing. We start in the US, where a rather irritating repeatedly wheeled-on-and-off table or desk or chairs or settee provides a series of interspersed scenes featuring Jessica - Decca (Emma Noakes), frustrated with life and her current misfortunes, expressed in a tiresomely penetrating voice, and her put-upon American interlocutor Bob Treuhaft (Joe Coen).
Emma Noakes as Decca and Joe Coen as Bob It’s difficult to care much about these often snarling exchanges. She, and to a slightly lesser extent he, like all the others, each in her own way, acted perfectly adequately. But not sufficiently to overcome the relative paucity of the material. Given the decibels, one waited to be gripped. But not here. The action flits between these venues and between dates (1935, as Fascism grows, through to 1969). There might be some point – this is a perfectly sound and quite frequent device. But one finds little point here: no gain, no added intensity, no special consequential insights. But there are three or four blessed moments of relief, albeit studded with their own somewhat enjoyable combative element. These emerge from the third setting, a quite stylish bedroom in Paris, in which, years later, a series of duets come off rather well. The speaking is resonant, the main relationship and combativeness neatly and entertainingly defined. It provided a welcome contrast. Actually comedy is rather a successful element in the sisters’ group gatherings in the 1930s. If the attractiveness of the content is – well – debatable, the definition of the different girls is really quite entertaining. Kirsty Besterman’s Nancy, already approaching the successful novelist, is pretty snide, superior, dismissive. Elisabeth Dermot Walsh’s Diana is in some respects the sane one, despite her right-wing political affiliations, holding her tongue then talking sense if the others go dotty. Ell Potter’s hefty Unity was frequently hilarious, a real character, explosive when any of the girls rashly mocked her Führer fascination or indeed any other of her larger than life obsessions. Quite a treat, in fact. Difficult not to cherish Debo (Flora Spencer-Longhurst), the baby of the family (born 1920): sweet and charming, and visibly growing up as the years ran by. Could one tell that she would end up as the famous Duchess of Devonshire? Yet who could not imagine she might not seem a beautiful snip to the young Duke (Cavendish), exactly the same age as her? There was thus some nice acting, a limited amount of shrewd direction (Richard Beecham), an adequate main sitting room set (Simon Kenny), plus relatively straightforward lighting (Aideen Malone). The 1930s music before each half was ideal. Why change it to a mishmash of modern minimalism thereafter (give or take a nicely subliminal Nazi marchpast). No, with the best will in the world, they could not make amends for a story that proved somewhat disjointed, failed to probe deeply, in many respects patently missed the boat, and only slimly hit the target. There could have been so much more to this exposé, more prising out of history, less repetitive routine, more meaningful invention. One wishes it well; but I fear some of the audiences to come might emerge a little disappointed. At the Belgrade, Coventry until Saturday 13 September. Then Malvern Festival Theatre 16-20 Sept, {Eastbourne Devonshire Park Theatre 23-27 Sept,] Oxford Playhouse 30 Sept- 4 Oct, Birmingham Rep 6-11 Oct. Roderic Dunnett 09-09-25 |
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