THE REVLON GIRL
Park Theatre
★★★★★
“a moving, beautifully acted and unexpectedly warm piece of theatre”
On 21 October 1966 a colliery tip above the Welsh village of Aberfan slid down the mountainside, engulfing the junior school and a row of houses. In all, 144 people died, 116 of them children and 28 adults. Because the school lay directly in the path of the slide, it is the loss of the children that has come to define the disaster in the public mind. But adults died too, and whole families were shattered.
Sixty years on, Neil Anthony Docking’s The Revlon Girl returns to the Park Theatre, where it made its London debut in 2017, and proves that grief handled with this much honesty does not date. Based on real events, it is set eight months after the disaster in a room above the Aberfan Hotel, where bereaved mothers meet every Tuesday to talk, cry and laugh without guilt. Aware that others might judge them frivolous, they secretly invite a Revlon representative to give them beauty tips. She arrives with a suitcase of cosmetics, quite unprepared for what she has walked into.
The premise could easily have slid into sentimentality. It never does. Maxine Evans, who directed the original production, trusts the audience with the tragedy and never underlines it. The loss is felt in every pause and sudden shift of mood, all the more devastating for being so lightly worn.
The design is just as restrained. A dark, bare hall starkly echoes the emotional backdrop, and at its centre stands a staircase that is never used. It may recall the hill itself, or perhaps the long uphill road the women must climb to come to terms with their loss. The only movement comes from Sian’s clacking high heels and febrile arranging and rearranging of the chairs, a nervous ritual that tells us more about her than any speech could.
What is remarkable about Docking’s play is that it is also very funny. In a way that never jars or sounds offbeat, the women snipe, tease and puncture each other’s pretensions. These moments of levity make the grief land harder. At the heart of the play are their different ways of grieving. They cannot agree on how to mourn, or whether loss permits lipstick, and the Revlon visit forces those differences into the open.
Every performance is strong. Charlotte Gray, reprising Sian, supports and encourages the group with warmth and generosity, until her own need breaks through. Her smiling exterior disintegrates as she finally declares why being attractive matters so much to her, and it is the evening’s most shattering moment. Antonia Kinlay, also returning as the Revlon girl, begins as a polite and somewhat stiif outsider with a case of samples. Her revelation late in the play becomes the catalyst that lets the women accept one another and their different ways of coping. Llinos Daniel (Jean), Hedydd Dylan (Maralyn) and Mirain Haf Roberts (Rona), newly cast in their roles, complete a flawless ensemble in which no glance or line is wasted.
At eighty minutes without an interval, the play is tightly built and never outstays its welcome. This is a moving, beautifully acted and unexpectedly warm piece of theatre, and a fitting tribute in this anniversary year.
THE REVLON GIRL
Park Theatre
Reviewed on 28th October 2026
by Louise Sibley
