In Funny Woman, Gemma Arterton and Barbara Parker – the Blackpool beauty queen that Arterton plays – have a similar problem. They are both funnier and smarter than everyone around them. Barbara wants to be a comedy star, but first she must outsmart legions of lascivious, patronising men in suits. Arterton plays the role with a breezy ease and natural wit, but she must glide through a stilted script inhabited by cipher-like characters.
The show, adapted from Nick Hornby’s 2014 novel, is set in the swinging Sixties. When we first meet Barbara, she’s rolling sticks of rock in a local factory, and has just been named the 1964 Blackpool Belle. “I am here, if you want to ask me anything,” she tells a photographer from the local paper, who only talks to her father and never looks at her face. In other words, Barbara will not be your conventional, sweetly smiling pin-up girl. She leaves her family and local butcher fiancé to head to London, because “I’ve got this feeling in me gut that life’s got something more in store!”
