The play opens onto a 1970’s living-room of a Northern council house fitted out with sofa, coffee table, standing lamps, snazzy wallpaper and an ill-matched carpet, which looks comfortable enough – but all is not what it seems. We are introduced to a friendly relationship between Carol and her next-door neighbour, Mrs. Donaldson, who acts as her housekeeper and who she calls ‘mother’, but the audience soon becomes aware of an overlying tension in the house.
First to disrupt the calm is the hand-wringing, but posh Adrienne, Carols’ sister who is nervy and upsets the running of the house by arriving a day early. She constantly puffs on Number 6 or Embassy cigarettes. She is the sister who got away, with the intention of becoming an actress in the South; Carol stayed home and looked after their parents, now both dead.
As the sisters catch up, their secrets are revealed. Adrienne is mentally unhinged and on her uppers with nowhere else to go; Carol is married to the thuggish Tom, someone she admits is ‘a bit rough’ – in fact, he is an idler, down the pub all the time. Her ‘flatmates’ are in fact prostitutes, her home a brothel as Terry, one of the clients tells Adrienne, ‘Things are very informal here’.
There are some nice touches: the prostitutes in their conversation define themselves by their star signs; everyone is always poncing cigarettes off each other; the punter who is a geography teacher wears brown corduroy jacket and hush puppies. Jo the prostitute thinks of the brothel as her home; in her actual home, she goes back to a husband who doesn’t like her, but likes the money she brings in. The prostitutes are played authentically by Madelyn Morris and Catherine Joyce as homely young women caught up in the world of sexual exploitation and poverty. Adrienne, played by Joanne Arber, makes a compelling picture of a woman trying to hold herself together with drink, pills and cigarettes, while madness is overwhelming her. Laura Kaye gives a convincing performance of a practical level-headed young woman, squeezed into a situation she is trying to make the best of.
Knowing David Storey is the playwright, who wrote the successful movie This Sporting Life, I was expecting a play much more challenging. While it might have been cutting edge in 1978 when it was first performed, it now feels decidedly dated. The drama is all in the reveals, but what is being revealed is sex work, misogyny, mental illness, domestic violence and compromised police. At the end of the first quarter of the 21st century, it’s a case of been there, done that.
The second half of the play exposes adultery and wife-beating, but we don’t feel compassion for anyone. Tighter direction might have helped but the action is simply not compelling enough, though the cast made a sterling effort.
Dates: 8-26th April 2025
Running Time: 2 hours 20 mins
Cast: Uncommon Theatre: Laura Kaye, Joanne Arber, Sarah Dorsett, Catherine Joyce, Madelyn Morgan, Oliver Lyndon, Christopher Tomkins, Stephen Guy
Director: Elizabeth Elstub
Press Photo: Hannah Burgin