Mercury
Theatre Company at the Mercury Theatre, Colchester
05.11.2012
If
you
could
invite
any
five
guests
to
dinner
...
We've
all
played
that
game,
and
Caryl
Churchill's
classic
from
1982
famously
begins
with
a
celebratory
meal
to
which
a
quintet
of
strong,
successful
women
are
summoned
from
myth
and
history.
Their
hostess,
newly
promoted
to
management
upstairs,
is
Marlene.
Also
a
strong
successful
woman,
but
no
more
a
feminist
than
Margaret
Thatcher
was
a
feminist,
or
that
other
great
hostess
from
the
80s
stage,
Beverley
out
of
Abigail's
party.
These
women
have
all
made
sacrifices
in
their
lives,
and
this
theme
– the
price
of
success
– runs
through
the
very
different
second
and
third
acts.
Gari
Jones's
production
succeeds
best
in
the
most
realistic
scene,
where
Marlene
confronts
her
sister
and
her
past.
The
opening
is
impressive,
with
projected
historical
notes,
and
a
striking
entrance
for
the
triumphant
Marlene
[Gina
Isaac].
The
restaurant
– sumptuously
designed
by
Sara
Perks
– has
a
large
round
table,
revolving
for
most
of
the
time,
which
means
that
the
women
end
up
mostly
shouting
their
notoriously
overlapping
lines
at
each
other,
so
there's
little
sense
of
sisterhood
or
celebration.
Most
telling
is
the
Pope
Joan
of
Shuna
Snow,
who
manages
to
be
funny,
moving
and
convincing.
Even
her
Latin
Lucretius
persuades.
In
fact,
as
the
play
crash
lands
in
the
real
world
of
the
employment
agency
and
the
Suffolk
council
estate,
there
are
some
wonderful
performances
from
all
the
actors.
Nadia
Morgan
is
Chaucer's
Griselda,
and
a
pathetic
applicant
who
can
hope
only
for
a
position
in
a
lampshade
firm.
Clare
Humphrey
makes
a
strong,
monosyllabic
Greet
as
well
as
a
very
touching
Angie,
the
child
who
longs
for
the
career-woman
world
of
her
"auntie"
but
seems
fated
to
stay
in
Suffolk.
Marvellous
monologues
from
Amy
Stacy
as
the
fantasist
Shona
[who
is
also
Angie's
little
friend
who'd
like
to
be
a
nuclear
physicist],
Amanda
Haberland
[an
impressive
Lady
Nijo
at
the
meal]
as
Win,
and
Pope
Joan
again
as
a
woman
who's
spent
twenty
years
being
overlooked
in
middle
management.
Kristin
Hutchinson
is
the
Edinburgh
explorer,
but
more
significantly
a
loyal
wife,
plus
the
stay-at-home
sister
who
holds
her
own
against
Marlene
in
the
searingly
strong
final
scenes.
Has
their
mother,
unseen
in
a
care
home,
wasted
her
life
as
a
housewife
in
a
backwater
?
Will
Angie's
children
say
the
same
of
her
?
Well,
they'd
be
grown-up
now,
or
at
the
least
in
their
teens;
maybe
the
students
in
the
audience
for
whom
this
play
is
a
set
text,
and
who
are
trying
to
make
sense
of
the
themes
thirty
years
on,
with
the
rather
obvious
assistance
of
a
Then
and
Now
montage
at
the
end.
"I
don't
understand
– that's
not
how
that
scene
is
written
..."
Well,
that's
what
directors
do,
and
like
it
or
not,
this
ambitious,
hard-hitting
production
with
its
soundtrack
and
its
projected
images,
is
what
we've
come
to
expect
from
the
inspirational
creative team at the Mercury.
production photograph: Robert Day
this piece first appeared on The Public Reviews
creative team at the Mercury.
production photograph: Robert Day
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