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Martha, Josie and The Chinese Elvis
Highbury Theatre Centre
*****
SO, we have Bolton’s own Miss Whiplash; a
very naughty, apparently, bald dry cleaner with a penchant for wearing
fishnets and frocks; a God - and number - fearing Irish spinster a few
beads short of a rosary; and a Vietnamese boat boy who is now a
fledgling Elvis impersonator.
Throw in a daughter who might not be away with
the fairies but is certainly on friendly terms with them, and who
obsesses about ice skating and longs for snow, then add the arrival of
her long dead twin sister returning Lazarus-like to the fold and you
know we are somewhere in a part of suburbia other plays fail to reach.
Charlotte Jones’ 1999 award winning play is a
bittersweet comedy, at times gloriously funny, at times desperately sad,
but, despite the bizarre characters, always human, filled with people
generating empathy.
Josie, played with wonderful contrasts by Pippa
Zvinia, is a single mum with two teenage daughters, living a quiet
suburban life as the family breadwinner, except she wins the bread in
her sitting room as a dominatrix – and if you don’t know what that is,
you obviously haven’t been naughty enough!
It is her fortieth birthday, she is tired of . .
. well, dominating I suppose, and is questioning her life.
The questioning comes during a session with one
of her regular clients, old fishnets and maid’s outfit Lionel, who finds
his disciplining curtailed by the sudden talk of retirement. Full of
sympathy for his friend rather than his dominatrix he decides to cheer
her up by throwing a birthday party – with a special guest.
RESIGNED AIR
Lionel is a sad figure, played with a resigned
air of achingly dull normality by Dan Payne as a bald, stocky man with
his best years behind him, best being a relative term,. He has no real
relationships and he lives his life through the clothes he cleans and
his regular visits to Josie to be disciplined for imagined acts of
naughtiness he has never managed to have.
Fussing around them is the cleaner Martha Clear,
a delightful performance from Denise Phillips, reprising the role she
played in a previous production in 2010. Phillips; timing is first class
as the cantankerous cleaner who trusts nothing or no one and is obsessed
with counting to five whenever she is worried, frightened, angry, happy,
sad, breathing, awake . . . entering or leaving with five knocks and
five turns of the handle on both sides of the door takes ages but
develops a life, and laughs, of its own, while dusting has to be done
with five sprays of Pledge or whatever and five sweeps of the duster –
six and upwards it seems leads to the world of the devil.
There is a reason . . . only telling you would
spoil it, but, n a more serious level, it does give an insight into the
miserable lives of people suffering from OCD.
Martha, the only cleaner Josie knows who actually
cleans, knows nothing of what goes on in the hidden world of leather and
whips, and prefers to leave it that way. She is tetchy, belligerent, and
desperately lonely, something only seen by the equally lonely Lionel.
Not that he is given much encouragement as Martha declares at one point
that she is “stuck in a whorehouse with a Jew who likes to dress up in
women’s clothing!”
Like Josie, though, she also has a secret, one
that has affected her whole life and one she suddenly finds she wants to
face
She is bad tempered, her fun is limited to merely
waking up in the morning and she suffers from OCD, yet Phillips never
crosses the line into panto caricature, she keeps Martha very much a
person, showing that behind the grumpy façade is a sad, Irish woman who
life has passed by.
BANANA MICROPHONE
Georgia Green is a
wonderful Brenda Maria, the surviving daughter, who is not quite all
there but still has enough left to make her probably the most normal of
the bunch. She dreams of snow and fantasises about ice skating and
Torvill and Dean, giving TV commentaries into a banana microphone of
performances by her and her dead sister Shelly-Louise for Canada –
Canada because after Torvill and Dean the British always come 15th.
She is a hare brained delight.
In a play full of
secrets Josie and Martha share another one, a love of Elvis. As Martha
puts it: “I pray for the second coming . . . God forgive me for saying
this . . . but when he comes, I hope he is wearing rhinestones and
singing Love Me Tender.”
So the arrival of special guest Timothy Wong,
another reprising his role from 2010, should be a delight, except Josie
doesn’t want the party in the first place and Martha, in her party garb
of all black, earning her the sobriquet of Morticia, is more party
antidote than animal.
Which leaves our Chinese Elvis struggling to make
himself heard, or at least listened to. Ham has all the right moves and
a passable Elvis voice in a clever performance with his slightly
effeminate manner and voice as Wong contrasting nicely with the snarling
sexuality(ish) of the King – who incidentally never, as far as we know
at any rate, suffered the indignity of Wong of being handcuffed to a
coffee table and disciplined by a dominatrix and her daughter.
That delight for our Timothy is yet to come but
for now this happy scene of domestic bliss is shattered when a second
surprise guest arrives in the shape of Katie Allen as Shelly-Louise, who
has supposedly been dead for the past four years but now seems very much
alive.
It is a return to open up old wounds, old anger
and old despair as mother and daughter clash and Brenda Marie’s memorial
garden tent is decamped to the sitting room as a refuge for her and
Chinese Elvis, who is finding this one for the money is harder work
than expected.
The second act has more serious themes than the
scene-setting first with several poignant moments, particularly Allen’s
monologue as to her “death” which is powerful and emotive stuff leaving
you really feeling for her – a teenager coping with a loving mother who
protects her family and dutifully provides for them . . . as a sex
worker.
Director Rob Phillips, husband of Denise, who,
incidentally was Lionel in 2010, sets a good pace on the excellent
set and with an excellent cast brings out the contrast between
what is on one hand a very funny, laugh out loud play with its bizarre
collection of weird characters and on the other, a more serious and sad
look at lives and relationships. Set on 6 January, Epiphany, this is a
real Christmas treat from Highbury, catch it before it returns to sender
on Saturday, 19 December.
Roger Clarke
09-12-15
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