Drayton Arms Theatre Archives - thespyinthestalls.com

Bruised Fruit

Drayton Arms Theatre

Reviewed – 26th August 2019

★★★★★

Babies and Bathwater

★★★★

Untouchables

★★★½

“a robust and effective collaboration”

There are times during the strong double bill Bruised Fruit when you want to cheer the women sharing their stories for being such no-nonsense and independent survivors.

In both short plays the women portrayed might be perceived as victims – but the drama allows them to reclaim their narratives. After all, the very term “bruised fruit” doesn’t just mean someone who is damaged: in present day parlance it also means someone overcoming adversity and growing through their experience.

The two half hour plays are brought together by Amy Garner Buchanan and Hayley Ricketson who say they have “designed, produced and everything elsed.” Amy wrote the first play while Hayley wrote the second, with Amy performing and Hayley directing both. It’s a robust and effective collaboration with a real sense of the pair exploring and developing ideas at every stage.

In Babies and Bathwater we meet Evelyn Parker, a housewife from Maidenhead, pleading in a court to divorce her husband. It is the story of a wide-eyed young girl being seduced by everything a man is and does and realising that her identity is completely entwined with his. For her divorce provides the chance to be heard and the opportunity to escape an unconventional relationship. We are kept in the dark for a lot of the time, following Evelyn as she seeks to discover her true self and being given hints of the truth. We wonder if this is a version of The Handmaid’s Tale, an example of religious or psychological trauma, or a take on the giving of consent and #MeToo until things turn quirky and rather more legendary.

It’s a neat twist which adds terrific humour to the monologue yet neither actor or director let it take over the story. Buchanan gives the character such heart and personality that you recognise her own claim that she is not a fruit, all soft and malleable, but a timebomb waiting to explode.

Untouchables is more heartbreaking, the story of chef and single mother Nadine, who is drawn to a club where she finds herself gazing regularly at a young female stripper. She may have been the victim of a faceless male predator (a thread runs through both plays of women somehow feeling they are to blame for their situations and finding their voice in a patriarchal society) but she spots in the dancer someone more damaged and empty. Nadine is, however, far harder to fathom and remains enigmatic.

Both Buchanan and Ricketson have a keen eye and ear for the power of storytelling and manage to cram a lot of strong emotion and resilience into the two half hours. In the hands of Buchanan, both women in the story come alive and we are certainly left hoping each can win their true place in the world.

This enthralling double bill finds the essential nature of two women who refuse to be defined by negative experiences and the resulting trauma. It brings together two separate cries from female hearts and makes their voices count in a sea of hostility and disinterest.

Reviewed by David Guest

Bruised Fruit

Drayton Arms Theatre

Last ten shows reviewed at this venue:

Love, Genius and a Walk | ★ | October 2018

Out of Step | ★★ | January 2019

Th’Importance Of Bein’ Earnest | ★★★ | February 2019

The Problem With Fletcher Mott | ★★★ | February 2019

Queer Trilogy | ★★★ | March 2019

Staying Faithful | ★★ | March 2019

Becoming The Invisible Woman | ★★ | June 2019

The Bald Prima Donna | ★★★½ | June 2019

Click here to see our most recent reviews

★★

“feels rather like being trapped in a Cosmopolitan questionnaire, or perhaps in the form that needs to be filled in before a health treatment at a spa”

Sarah Wanendeya’s play, in which she also takes the lead, starts from a simple premise: a woman ‘wakes up’ to find herself in an unknown country; she has become middle aged. Four other middle-aged women act as a chorus, leading her to understand where she is and how she got there, and guide her into her future.

The stage is set with an enormous pile of laundry and an overturned laundry basket; the 1930s classic ‘Keep Young and Beautiful’ plays. The opening of the show sees Wanendeya emerge from under the laundry heap, to be greeted by the four other women, in lab coats with clipboards. It’s a fun reveal, but the opening section, in which the women bombard our central character with questions, is problematic. It feels rather like being trapped in a Cosmopolitan questionnaire, or perhaps in the form that needs to be filled in before a health treatment at a spa. More importantly, the phrase ‘This is what middle-aged women look like’ needs to be challenged when the five women in question all have white skin. Similarly, the domestic drudgery of ‘wife, mother, cleaner, cook’ which our protagonist rails against, is far from common to all, but is instead a very particular, hetero-normative take on this period in a woman’s life.

Becoming the Invisible Woman steps onto safer ground when it more clearly becomes a personal story, and the ‘universalisms’ of middle-aged womanhood are left behind. We revisit Sarah’s fourteen year old self, and then track her early aspirations to be an actor, her discovery of the rave scene at Manchester University in the late 80s, where she met the man who would become her husband, and her emergence into a new, empowered, middle-aged self. Despite a couple of moments, in which we see Sarah giving birth, and dancing to the music she loves, this section is oddly restrained, and would have benefited from being more connected and visceral. This is Sarah’s story, but it somehow loses its power and specificity along the way.

All in all, this is a show which plays it safe, and could definitely afford to take more risks – in the writing, direction and performance. Pollyanna Newcombe (director) and her able team (Sound Designer Peter Challis; Lighting Designer and Operator Bryony Maguire) would perhaps have had more opportunity to play, had the four other cast members been slightly better used. There were brief moments when their individuality sparkled, but, somewhat ironically, ultimately Sophie Doherty, Wiz Kelly, Lizzie Parry and Karen Staples were reduced to the golden age number on their T-shirts.

Reviewed by Andrew Wright

Photography by Peter Clark

Drayton Arms Theatre

Reviewed – 26th August 2019

★★★★★

Babies and Bathwater

★★★★

Untouchables

★★★½

“a robust and effective collaboration”

There are times during the strong double bill Bruised Fruit when you want to cheer the women sharing their stories for being such no-nonsense and independent survivors.

It’s a neat twist which adds terrific humour to the monologue yet neither actor or director let it take over the story. Buchanan gives the character such heart and personality that you recognise her own claim that she is not a fruit, all soft and malleable, but a timebomb waiting to explode.

This enthralling double bill finds the essential nature of two women who refuse to be defined by negative experiences and the resulting trauma. It brings together two separate cries from female hearts and makes their voices count in a sea of hostility and disinterest.

Reviewed by David Guest

Bruised Fruit

Drayton Arms Theatre

Last ten shows reviewed at this venue:

Drayton Arms Theatre

Reviewed – 11th June 2019

★★

“feels rather like being trapped in a Cosmopolitan questionnaire, or perhaps in the form that needs to be filled in before a health treatment at a spa”

Reviewed by Andrew Wright

Photography by Peter Clark

Becoming the Invisible Woman

Drayton Arms Theatre until 15th June

Previously reviewed at this venue: