Rose

Online via hopemilltheatre.co.uk

Reviewed – 9th September 2020

★★

“There are glimpses of the grandeur of the journey”

Solo shows are hard. If there’s one thing that’s become more and more evident with every one-person play I see, it’s that. Sure, they can be easier to produce, but it seems trickier to capture the elements that make theatre crackle and pop. With only one actor, the energy between characters can be lost. With only one central character, often recounting the past, the script can lack a sense of momentum. And with only one point of view being presented, the overall production can feel thematically flat. Unfortunately, Rose falls victim to all of these trappings.

Written by Martin Sherman, Rose sees the titular character (portrayed by Maureen Lipman) relay her odyssey to the audience through the rise of the Third Reich to post-war America. As a Jewish woman, her relationship to her faith is frequently forced to be reckoned with, from the Russian village she grew up in through to the bustle of Miami. The detail into which Rose goes reveals a number of nuances into the ways in which Jewish culture and communities shifted over time and places, and provides a level of insight that isn’t often found on this scale. However, there is a lot of detail. Running at two hours, Rose sometimes feels like someone reading their Wikipedia page at you, as plot threads and tangents spring up all over the place and never feel like they’re tying together meaningfully, or that they’re contributing a great deal to the overall narrative.

Lipman gives a strong performance as Rose, albeit one that she seemed underprepared for, and is under-directed by Scott Le Crass. Certain sections meander, and the distances between the highs and lows feels too small at times, but there are some moments when Lipman rises above the confines of the format. There are a couple of scenes towards the end of the first act – one set on a boat, the other on a train – which are electrifying as the danger of the past is made to feel present in the retelling, and the urgency of the choices that had to be made land emotionally with the audience.

It’s all the more impressive that these moments connect as well as they do considering Lipman has no live audience to speak to. I expect there’s a reason we don’t see one-person films, and it’s because actors tell stories best when they have someone actively responding, whether that be an audience or fellow actors. Streamed from the Hope Mill Theatre, Rose has no-one in the room to engage with, and it suffers for it.

With antisemitism on the rise, Rose could be utterly vital. There are glimpses of the grandeur of the journey and the intimacy of the telling merging into something poignant and prescient, but the format of the play and this production feel ultimately unsuited to each other, instead serving only to highlight their shortcomings.

Reviewed by Ethan Doyle

Photography by Channel Eighty8

Rose

Online via hopemilltheatre.co.uk until 12th September

Previously reviewed by Ryan:

I Wanna be Yours | ★★★ | Bush Theatre | December 2019

Falling in Love Again | ★★ | King’s Head Theatre | January 2020

Four Play | ★★★ | Above The Stag | January 2020

The Guild | ★★★½ | The Vaults | January 2020

Far Away | ★★½ | Donmar Warehouse | February 2020

Republic | ★★★★ | The Vaults | February 2020

Ryan Lane Will Be There Now In A Minute | ★★★★ | The Vaults | February 2020

Big | ★ | Network Theatre | March 2020

Stages | ★★★½ | Network Theatre | March 2020

Songs For A New World | ★★★ | Online | July 2020

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