A decade before John Osborne and the angry young men of the Royal Court, a woman was spurred to write for the stage by “a mood of red-hot revolt” at what she saw there: “cocktail time, glamorous gowns and underworked, about-to-be-deceived husbands”. Ena Lamont Stewart (1912-2006) wanted to witness “Real Life. Ordinary People”.
Stewart portrayed Glasgow’s children’s hospital in Starched Aprons, a title that earns a place beside the artist Clare Leighton’s contemporaneous memoir, Tempestuous Petticoat. She chronicled tenement life in Men Should Weep, spectacularly staged 13 years ago at the National. She wrote the trio of short plays staged as Knocking on the Wall.
These 1970s one-acters chisel deeply into the withering of women’s lives. In Walkies Time for a Black Poodle, loneliness gnaws at a wife whose aspirant hubby divides her from old friends and hides her from his new colleagues. In an evening of strong performances, Joanne Gallagher has a particular flair for suggesting the way sadness spins into foulness. In the title drama, a troubled young woman is guarded and instructed by her brisk sister – neither of them are quite as they first appear. In both plays an acid final twist is dealt with the lightest of touches.
Finlay Glen’s very fine stagings are hyperrealistic. The material world is beautifully conjured in Delyth Evans’s costumes and set: Ercol furniture, a mustard-yellow telephone, a window that looks out on darkness; the tastefully subdued cream frock of the woman who has gone up in the world; the carefully calibrated outfits that spell success and defeat – flouncy pleats for the smart woman, the just-too-long brown skirt of her flailing sister. Yet the action echoes with unheard dreams. At one point a sad creature beats on the invisible wall between stage and audience.
I saw only two of the scheduled three plays, one actor being unable to perform the day I attended. Bigger theatres cancel performances for less reason. The Finborough marvellously carried on undaunted with its current season charting forgotten plays by female dramatists.
This was a week when theatres lived up – and down – to their particular reputations. Naturalistic social observation is Hampstead’s speciality. Turning it to comedy is Richard Bean’s talent. For 10 minutes my experience of To Have and to Hold – which charts the edgy coexistence of a retired policeman, his wife and their socially mobile offspring – threatened to be all too immersive. On stage a bedridden partner failed to hear his wife as she tried out a stairlift (“I’ve set off!”); behind me an audience member who could not get his hearing aid to work drowned out the dialogue with his laments.
Thereafter it was a clear-eyed, warm evening, free of the obvious pitfalls of pathos and directed with a swing by Richard Wilson and Terry Johnson. In the background, Jim Reeves – “Bimbo, Bimbo, where ya gonna go-e-o?” In the foreground, fun with making a reclining chair zoom up and down, and well-timed knockabout: “Why do they call you Rhubarb Eddie?” “Because my first name is Edward.” A slight plot about scamming is cleverly turned but barely needed. The fuel of the evening is the familiar but well-observed territory of slipping minds, failing bodies and crosspatch affection. Marion Bailey excels as the not-for-a-second overstated wife: she is one of the few actors who is able to provoke laughter by her persuasive amusement at things that are not actually funny.
Still, the revelation is Alun Armstrong’s character secretly recalling his career on the beat (the body of one woman had “Mild” and “Bitter” tattooed on her breasts). Delivered with the actor’s steady hangdog practicality, the tales are presented as simple anecdotes, yet they are marvellous monologues, perfectly delivered. Most famous for One Man, Two Guvnors, Bean – whose father was a policeman – has always been a dramatist of the workplace. Reminding audiences that work is a mental world as well as a job.
Mates in Chelsea will not help the Royal Court to uphold its reputation as a home of new writing. Rory Mullarkey’s play aims at such easy targets and attacks them so deliberately that satire ends up cowering in a corner.
Under fire are toffs: not the dangerous kind who have fooled us into believing they can run the government, but stereotyped idiots in bright trousers whose country pile is called Dimley Grange. Also oligarchs, who are unlikely to have many advocates among Sloane Square theatregoers. One lot dresses up as the other, and – in a sudden swerve from hyped-up hilarity to gore – some people end up dead.
Fenella Woolgar shines as a cool and saucy matriarch. George Fouracres is a snappily amusing bluffer. Still, Sam Pritchard’s production is heavy-handed. Watching the comic lines struggling to land is like following an actor staggering around the stage with a dagger in her chest. The liveliest moment comes after the interval when there is a wordless game of badminton. The sharpest joke is very niche: about Evgeny Lebedev and his commandeering of the Evening Standard theatre awards.
This is the final big production at the Court under Vicky Featherstone’s artistic directorship, which she leaves after 10 years. I’m grateful to her for other evenings: Caryl Churchill’s haunting Escaped Alone, Milli Bhatia’s speedy staging of seven methods of killing kylie jenner, the series of testimonies that quietly followed the murder of Sarah Everard. Almost 80 years after the debut of Ena Lamont Stewart, the theatre can still benefit from feminist programming.
Star ratings (out of five)
Knocking on the Wall ★★★★
To Have and to Hold ★★★
Mates in Chelsea ★★
Knocking on the Wall is at the Finborough theatre, London, until 25 November
To Have and to Hold is at Hampstead theatre, London, until 25 November
Mates in Chelsea is at the Jerwood Theatre Downstairs, Royal Court, London until 16 December
