Caryl Churchill's 1982 play is most
notable for its audacious first act, in which protagonist Marlene
celebrates her promotion to MD of her employment agency by throwing a
dinner party in a swish restaurant, at which the guests are
extraordinary women from history, art or myth, including Victorian
traveller Isabella Bird, Pope Joan and (arriving fashionably late) the
Patient Griselda. There is no mystical gubbins; these half-dozen women
simply eat and chat (as Brueghel's Dull Gret' empties bread rolls from
the table into her basket), each about her own preoccupations but
bantering with and talking over each other entirely naturally. We see
the achievement of each in her historical or cultural context, but the
setting also makes us think, how far we've come since then!... and
again, more uncertainly: how far
have we come?
Max
Stafford-Clark's excellent revival, coming as it does 29 years after he
directed its première at the Royal Court, adds a further dimension to
the question. Most of the philosophical struggles of feminism have been
won in western culture, but there often remains a yawning gap between
theory and practice, and the concept of "post-feminism" can dignify a
sneaky reactionism. Churchill, and indeed the Eighties themselves, give
form to this debate in Acts Two and Three, showing us Marlene's work
life and distant, fractious relationship with her sister who has
brought up Marlene's daughter as her own in rural Suffolk. It is not
simply the mandatory contretemps about Thatcher (at once an icon and a
travesty of feminism), but the dilemmas around the idea of "having it
all"... or indeed having any of it to speak of. Years before that label
was popularised, it was already apparent that combinations and
conflicts of professional and personal aspirations could lead to
complications of gender-agenda.
Suranne
Jones as Marlene rightly refuses to play for our empathy; her spiky
duologues with Stella Gonet as the wife of a colleague and then as
Marlene's sister are uncomfortable in the best ways. Olivia Poulet
doubles well as Dull Gret' and Marlene's slightly simple daughter
Angie, and Stafford-Clark smartly delineates the ’80s period by
incidental use of several of the era's more pointed songs including "A
Town Called Malice", "Too Much Too Young" and, implicitly raising that
core question again right at the end, "Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)".
Written for the Financial
Times.