The
late Frank Marcus maintained that his 1964 play was not “about”
lesbianism, which is just as well since in this respect it has dated
considerably. Marcus held that its real subject was the abusive power
relationship between June Buckridge, known as Sister George after the
character she plays in a popular radio soap, and her lover Alice
McNaught, whose nickname “Childie” refers to her compulsion towards
infantilism. Unfortunately, in this respect too it has dated
considerably. As for the parody of broadcast drama and its
audience-seeking imperatives, such as killing off Applehurst’s beloved
district nurse Sister George, it has… you guessed it.
Nor, I am afraid, does Iqbal Khan’s production do anything to counteract this. As with his revival of Arthur Miller’s
Broken Glass
currently playing elsewhere in the West End, he trusts the play and the
actors to do the work; in this instance, however, the trust proves
misplaced. It cannot, nearly half a century on, fend for itself. It is
not, for instance, proof against a supporting performance by Helen
Lederer (as the couple’s neighbour Madam Xenia) which is so unconcerned
with trifles such as remote plausibility of characterisation. Eccentric
Eastern European clairvoyant? Fine, bring on the entire kookiness
quotient of all the accession states put together.
Conversely,
Meera Syal as George is hampered by her innate reasonableness. When
George demonstrates her domination of Childie by making her eat a cigar
butt or the like, Syal gives off no whiff of real threat. Robert
Aldrich’s 1968 film version may have had a script that travestied the
play, but Aldrich succeeded in capturing the requisite air of suburban
gothic which is entirely absent here, on Ciaran Bagnall’s set with its
hint of a huge, old-fashioned radio grille as the back wall. Childie’s
eventual disentanglement with George, and taking up with the producer
of George’s series Mercy Croft (Belinda Lang), never feels either
emotionally difficult or fraught with danger, which leaves simply the
impression that these events are taking too damn long. In fact, on the
press night, the round of applause which greeted the interval sputtered
out when it became apparent that another lengthy scene was yet to be
played; the clapping at the actual interval was rather more polite.
What was once ground-breaking is now just plodding.
Written for the Financial
Times.